Google May Be Sued By Female Employees Over Sexism, Discrimination

The controversy around the Google diversity memo is deepening, following the leak of a 10-page manifesto criticizing diversity initiatives in the company. More than 60 former and current female employees are expected to file a class-action lawsuit against the company over sexism and unequal pay, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

Google has “a culture that is hostile to women,” James Feinberg, a civil rights attorney told The Guardian. Feinberg is working on a class-action suit on the behalf of the company’s female employees.

The scandal started with the leaked manifesto that argued men occupy more leading roles in the tech industry due to “biological differences” which prompted the company to fire the author. However, the document has once again ignited the controversy around discrimination towards women in the industry.

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Feinberg claimed several women he interviewed for the suit were paid around $40,000 less on an average for doing the same work as men. He also stated that more than 12 women claimed that the pay disparity played a role in their decision to leave the company.

He claimed that men get higher initial salaries and stock offerings and this disparity increases over time.

Google, however, claims otherwise,” “Sixty people is a really small sample size. There are always going to be differences in salary based on location, role, and performance, but the process is blind to gender,” a company spokesperson told the Guardian.

But, despite what the spokesperson said, there is a one in 100 million chance that the discrimination is occurring randomly or by chance, Janice Madden, a University of Pennsylvania professor of sociology said.

The proposed class-action suit comes in addition to a case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) which argued in April that the company was systemically discriminating against women. That investment isn’t yet complete, but the results aren’t promising for Google. The company has been forced to hand over its salary records in that case to a judge.

Janet Herold, the regional solicitor for the DoL, said at the time: “The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry. “

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When it comes to sexism, Google isn’t the only culprit. The tech industry does not have its hands clean when it comes to sexism. A survey done in May by the job website Hired found that on average, women were offered 4 percent less pay than men, with some companies even offering 50 percent less as compared to their male colleagues. The largest pay gap was between white men and black women in tech — for every $1 a white man made, a black woman made $0.79.

“The problem with women and tech right now is not that women aren’t going into computing. It's that they don't stay. And the reason they don’t stay is that it's largely an unpleasant environment to work in [for women]. That’s why it's so important [to note] that this is a field that started out with women and becomes male, not the other way around,” Nathan Ensmenger, an expert on the history of computing at Indiana University told the Time Magazine on Tuesday.