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More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

theguardian.com

81–90 of 136 posts

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#81

Every time an article like this pops up, I see the same sort of response. It's always - Women don't negotiate - Women get pregnant - Women work in lower pay professions And 90% of the time, the article already accounts for the nuances of those topics. Not to mention these arguments have been answered thoroughly many times over, and a cursory google would reveal that. I just wish people would do some basic research be…

"- Women don't negotiate"

I've read the article a third time, I can't find how "the article already accounts for the nuances of those topics."

Could you point me to what I'm missing?

[Edit] I'm not making the case for negotiations, I'm a proponent of https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite recently, Google was found guilty of colluding to depress engineer salaries via "no poaching" agreements. Google doesn't get the "free market" benefit of the doubt anymore in these matters.

"no poaching" is illegal but it doesn't go against free market principles. It's just companies willingly agreeing not to poach, as long as there is no coercion, it doesn't go against free market principles. Now, the question of whether it is unethical or not is a whole other topic. I think that "no poaching" is not very efficient anyway as it usually happens between incumbent companies only whose stock isn't growing…

  "no poaching" is illegal but it doesn't go against free market principles.
I call bullshit. A no poaching agreement very much resembles a cartel. Same as companies colluding in order to squeeze the highest possible value out of, say, tenders for public works.

If poaching agreements are in line with free markets then so are lying, cheating and violating just about every aspect which is the basis of contract law.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#83
post #61
post #8

> The document, which was widely condemned as misogynistic and scientifically inaccurate Citation needed? Have The Guardian actually read the memo? They are re-iterating misconceptions based on Gizmodos original story, where Gizmodo deliberately gave a misleading report, removed sources and incorrectly presented an internal memo for internal discussion as an "anti-diversity manifesto". Even a cursory glance of the ac…

I read the whole thing and I think the allegations hold. There is one citation to a scientific article in the memo: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.... . It's a meta analysis that looks at abstract personality traits (agreeableness, people-orientation) in studies involving socialized adults. The big takeaway is that these studies show that women are more "agreeable" and "people-oriented."…

all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically). You see very low participation rates on hard STEM among women on countries where women have both large degree of economic and political freedom. Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM. It is not just the US, but other countries with even better gender relations (Norwawy, Sweden, Denmark), it seems women just don't want to study computer science/engineering or physics.

In communist countries people were assigned jobs and often it was not their choice where they ended up. If the country had X % has to be women, then so be it. But, we all know his forced centralized planning is a failure on the long term.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#84
If women are getting paid less for the same work, that's wrong. But I sense this is not what's happening here: we are paid less for whatever the reason and we are suing google for it because there's this new religion, that's having a huge bias against discrimination.

I'm sick of seeing this everywhere. Well f that. I'll have 15 children and my wife will stay at home all the time. Our civilisation survived because this was the healthy family model for thousands of years, I'm not participating for this sick liberal experiment any more.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#86
post #6

Here is a clue for everyone: you aren't paid according to the value you bring. You are either paid according to some pseudo-arbitrary schedule or you are paid what you can be had for. Unless Google has a secret pay penalty for females, the problem here is women being willing to work for less. No lawsuit is needed to correct that.

> you are paid what you can be had for

> No lawsuit is needed to correct that.

If they can either get Google to settle or convince a jury they deserve compensation, they've retroactively increased their pay. It's a high and expensive bar, but if they clear it they get paid more for work they already did.

So to put it into the perspective you're espousing, these women are simply negotiating their rate after the fact.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#87
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a professor of social psychology, a PhD in personality psychology, a professor in evolutionary psychology, and a PhD in sexual neuroscience Only one of these is qualified to comment on biological claims.

But all of them are qualified to comment on the differences between the two genders.

Debatable. I would exclude the EvoPsych chap from being qualified to comment on anything, personally, and the other two would need to show quite strongly that they weren't coming at this from a position of anti-SJW/snowflake commentary that they've previously demonstrated.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#88
post #8

> The document, which was widely condemned as misogynistic and scientifically inaccurate Citation needed? Have The Guardian actually read the memo? They are re-iterating misconceptions based on Gizmodos original story, where Gizmodo deliberately gave a misleading report, removed sources and incorrectly presented an internal memo for internal discussion as an "anti-diversity manifesto". Even a cursory glance of the ac…

>> The document, which was widely condemned as misogynistic and scientifically inaccurate

>Citation needed? Have The Guardian actually read the memo?

Well, they were quite clever, weren't they. They didn't make any claims about the document itself, just about its reception.

And so what they write is technically true, the memo was widely condemned as misogynistic and scientifically inaccurate, even if those condemnations were completely wrong.

And of course the impression the sentence gives is that the document was these things. Journalists are good with words, they do this sort of thing all the time.

I used to read "Der Spiegel" a lot, one of the premier German weeklies. And I used to take what I read at face value. Until they started writing about stuff I had first hand knowledge off. Which tended to be comically inaccurate.

And then I started looking more closely, and noticed that they would pull these little language tricks all the time: giving an example, then an absolute number of one thing, comparing it to a percentage of another thing. Creating impressions and "causal" connection between events or facts by simply mentioning them next to each other, without ever making the claim. Etc.

It is actually entertaining to analyze, but don't expect to get too much useful information.

And no, I am not yelling "Fake News", most of the alternative news sources are far, far worse, not relying on linguistic trickery but just simply lying.

Anyway, the ones that do this the least (that I know of), are the Economist (their pro-finance, pro-CEO bias is transparent enough not to be much of a problem), the BBC (they actually really try hard) and Die Zeit (German).

Fun!

EDIT: An important "not" was missing. Sigh.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#89
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if those facts are true, Google must have programs to make things fair. For same responsibilities same salary. You can say women are different than men or say they are exactly equals. Whatever is your position for the same job you must have the same salary. There shouldn't be any discussion here.

> For same responsibilities same salary. Why is that? If there is someone who is willing to take on those responsibilities for less pay, well that's just fine for the company and I think that people tend to forget that Google (and many other IT companies) is a for-profit company. For me at least, I've always seen salary negotiations as somewhat of a "right person at the right moment". If you're very lucky and the com…

Throwaway account created one hour ago?

So you say that some who is starving if Africa we shouldn't care because he wasn't at the right place at the right moment? If you answer is that it is not the same case where do you put the line? Because your argument for getting things is basically luck.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#90
post #83
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole thing and I think the allegations hold. There is one citation to a scientific article in the memo: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.... . It's a meta analysis that looks at abstract personality traits (agreeableness, people-orientation) in studies involving socialized adults. The big takeaway is that these studies show that women are more "agreeable" and "people-oriented."…

all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically). You see very low participation rates on hard STEM among women on countries where women have both large degree of economic and political freedom. Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM. It is not just the US, but other countries with even better gender relations (Norwawy, Sweden, Denmark), it seems women jus…

Here's a graphic: https://erzaehlmirnix.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/unterschie...

There was also a BBC article on this: "Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?"

Quote:

"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

Also: https://gendertrap.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/the-gender-equal...

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