Google 'segregates' women into lower-paying jobs, stifling careers, lawsuit says
A class action lawsuit was filed last Thursday against Google, claiming gender discrimination and pay inequality on behalf of all women employed by Google in California since 2013. The lawsuit charges that Google has a “sexist” work culture in paying women less than men for “substantially similar” work, assigning women to lower job classifications even when holding credentials, experience, and education similar to male coworkers, and promoting males over females to better paying technical roles. Civil rights attorney James Finberg reported that more than 90 women who currently or previously worked at Google have contacted him, with several other current employees declining to be plaintiffs due to fear of retribution from the company.
Google has publically insisted that it has eliminated its gender pay gap, but the tech giant has become a lightning rod for diversity and discrimination issues in recent months. In April, the U.S. Department of Labor accused the corporation of practicing extreme pay discrimination. In August, Google fired a male engineer who wrote a memo criticizing affirmative action and the company’s diversity programs, claiming that white males were being discriminated against in technology, and that the company was intolerant of conservative political views. The firing caused right wing supporters to harass Google employees on Twitter, similar to the Gamergate harassment controversy in 2014.
See "Google 'segregates' women into lower-paying jobs, stifling careers, lawsuit says", Sam Levin, The Guardian, September 18, 2017