(Photo credit: Robert Scoble)
In an effort to retain the public face of “diversity,” Google just fired a guy for daring to say women just might be made differently than men, thus explaining so-called gender gaps in tech employment.
Now, ironically, the company’s being accused of discriminating against women.
You can’t win for losing, these days.
Just a day after Google fired James Damore for his Google memo accusing the company of pushing diversity simply for diversity’s sake, dozens of women are now saying the tech company is discriminating against them by paying them less than men.
It all started when civil rights attorney James Finberg blasted out a question over social media, asking female Google employees if they felt they were being paid as much as their male counterparts. He said the query led to him fielding dozens of calls from women who said they were getting the short end of the payroll stick (from a company that just fired a guy for alleged sexism).
Finberg (who's based in San Francisco, by the way) now says he's gearing up to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of these women, who say they’ve been getting paid 25-30 percent less than their male colleagues, and have been passed over for positions reserved more often for men.
“The culture at Google is hostile to women,” he said. “Women tend to be channeled into what are perceived to be softer positions. User interface positions, design positions. Men get the code positions. Code positions are more highly paid and more highly valued at Google.”
Google, of course, denies these claims, saying their own internal analyses have shown no pay gap between their female and male workers.
This is all in addition, by the way, to a lawsuit Damore say he plans to file, alleging he was unduly fired by Google for expressing his opinion that the company is trying a little to hard to not seem sexist.
As a company, it must sting a bit to be sued by a group of dissatisfied women, just a few hours after publicly canning a guy for saying you’re bending a little too far backwards to be “inclusive” toward said women. Perhaps Google can scrape together some data of their own to refute this new round of accusations – if, of course, it isn’t too busy trying to yank the proverbial knife from its own back.
Funny how I don’t feel all that bad for them…