If the question about why women just don't go work at another company when they're given unequal pay was legitimate, then I think it's fair to assume there was a knowledge gap. If it was a bad faith question, of course, there's not much I can do about that!
It is illegal to discriminate on benefits coverage between women and men, so whether women are using their benefits more is wholly irrelevant. This is like saying that older people should make less because they get sick more--utter nonsense. Benefits coverage at a company is in any case designed to be pooled to reduce the risk.
Whether you actually utilize your benefits should also have no bearing on whether you get promotions or raises, given that those are supposed to be tied to job performance, so I don't understand how that's related to my point.
Similarly, for being on the rotation less. If Google wants to include on-call hours worked in your salary, it has the option to pay explicitly for overtime. The reality, of course, is that Google does not want to do this, because this way they can pay both women and men less.
Finally, I'm not sure why you trust Google's analysis of its own payment structure. Besides the fact that this is literally an instance of "we investigated ourselves, and didn't find anything wrong!", they've been repeatedly found to pay women and men different salaries for the same role when employees release their salaries (something the company officially denies doing). They also have a long history of executives blocking women's career advancement to punish them for reporting sexual harassment.
> It is illegal to discriminate on benefits coverage between women and men, so whether women are using their benefits more is wholly irrelevant. This is like saying that older people should make less because they get sick more--utter nonsense. Benefits coverage at a company is in any case designed to be pooled to reduce the risk.
> Whether you actually utilize your benefits should also have no bearing on whether you get promotions or raises, given that those are supposed to be tied to job performance, so I don't understand how that's related to my point.
You are misinterpreting my comment. It had been well documented that in job searches women prioritize benefits at a higher rate than men. So women might on average be getting $10,000 less in salary but also ~$10,000 less in benefits. This is not about utilitzation of the same benefits. This is about differences in men's and women's job preferences that result in unequal salary but equal overall compensation.
> Similarly, for being on the rotation less. If Google wants to include on-call hours worked in your salary, it has the option to pay explicitly for overtime. The reality, of course, is that Google does not want to do this, because this way they can pay both women and men less
Equal pay for equal work can also be violated by giving workers equal pay while allocating unequal work.
> Finally, I'm not sure why you trust Google's analysis of its own payment structure. Besides the fact that this is literally an instance of "we investigated ourselves, and didn't find anything wrong!", they've been repeatedly found to pay women and men different salaries for the same role when employees release their salaries (something the company officially denies doing). They also have a long history of executives blocking women's career advancement to punish them for reporting sexual harassment.
Google's analysis is conducted over all of their employees, for one. By comparison people typing their salaries into spreadsheets is 1) subject to people falsifying or misremembering their compensation, and 2) has a selection bias towards people who feel they are not compensated fairly. Furthermore, Google has the data to know the stock prices at the time equity packages are awarded, which affects compensation results (e.g. someone who started right before a rise in stock gets more money than someone after even though their original equity packages had the same dollar value).
Google does not generally engage in negotiation of benefits on being hired, so this would be a strange reason for women to make less than men in the same role at the company.
I'm afraid that paying employees less for a role with the same stated responsibilities, then allocating them less work, and using that as an excuse for why you're not paying them as much, is still a violation of equal pay for equal work. If the roles have different responsibilities, they should have different titles.
Is there any evidence that would convince you that Google is not being honest in its evaluation of its workers' compensation? Because if there isn't, this is kind of a pointless conversation to have.
Anyway. You still haven't addressed my original point, which I can back up with lots of research: that women are passed over for promotions and raises much more than men:
Also, talk to literally any woman who is trying to advance in her career. This is an incredibly universal phenomenon. It's really strange to me to see people trying to cast doubt on it in this thread when it's actually a really uncontroversial fact.
> Google does not generally engage in negotiation of benefits on being hired, so this would be a strange reason for women to make less than men in the same role at the company.
Yet again, you continue to misinterpret the role of benefits that I explained in my comments. Women's prioritization of benefits over compensation does not mean they are receiving different benefits than men at the same company. It means they apply to different companies than men. Pointing out that Google does not negotiate benefits is not a valid line of criticism.
> I'm afraid that paying employees less for a role with the same stated responsibilities, then allocating them less work, and using that as an excuse for why you're not paying them as much, is still a violation of equal pay for equal work. If the roles have different responsibilities, they should have different titles.
You assume that this is the company refusing to allocate more work to women. Typically, this is the opposite: the company is more than happy to give women 24 hour oncalls but a lower rate of women are willing to do so than men.
> Is there any evidence that would convince you that Google is not being honest in its evaluation of its workers' compensation? Because if there isn't, this is kind of a pointless conversation to have.
The onus is on you to provide proof of your allegations that Google is not being honest in its pay analysis. What proof do you have that they are lying? Like I said, employee compiled spreadsheets are rife with selection bias, and there's no guarantee that employees are even telling the truth. Why would we believe the latter over studies compiled by people who actually have the real salary data?
> Anyway. You still haven't addressed my original point, which I can back up with lots of research: that women are passed over for promotions and raises much more than men:
This is not what the research you linked claims. There is a promotion gap, in the same way that there is a wage gap: the average woman is less likely to be promoted than the average man. The existence of a gap is not the same as the existence of discrimination. Much like the wage gap, when normalizing for role and experience the disparity mostly disappears:
> The additional controls slightly reduce the gender difference in promotion rates but, controlling for all variables, including worker performance ratings, men's promotion rates were still 2.2 percentage points higher than women's.
And furthermore, your own study says that there is no wage gap once these factors are accounted for:
> However, in marked contrast, the authors find that after controlling for measured characteristics, promotions and expected promotions continued to yield comparable wage increases for both men and women. And, there were essentially no gender differences in overall wage growth at the establishment, with or without promotion
So this difference in promotion drops to 2% when accounting for differences in role and experience, and there is no wage difference with or without promotion between men and women. I'm not sure how you think this study supports your point.
> Also, talk to literally any woman who is trying to advance in her career. This is an incredibly universal phenomenon. It's really strange to me to see people trying to cast doubt on it in this thread when it's actually a really uncontroversial fact.
I have. Many do note instances where they believed there were discriminated against on the basis of their sex. Most of them also detailed explicitly discriminatory policies aimed at allocating more opportunity to men. I'm more than happy to give you the details if you so desire. They want to be treated equal to men, not have the red carpet rolled out for them because they're "diverse". Since you're seeing many people disagreeing with your claims around these supposedly uncontroversial facts, it would be prudent to rethink whether your assertions really are as universal and uncontroversial as you claim.
