Three former female Google employees sued the company on Tuesday in the California Superior court in San Francisco for claiming that they don’t pay women as much as their male co-workers for doing the same work. The group of women consists of a former software engineer, manager and communications specialist. Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri all claim that women working at Google get promoted far less than men even if they are similarly qualified. The women also claim that the company knew or should have known about the pay gap, and should have taken action to combat the issue.
This lawsuit also follows shortly after the firing of James Damore, a former engineer at Google who wrote a memo claiming that the reasons are biologically and psychologically unable to excel in the tech industry.
One of the women’s lawyer’s, Kelly Dermody of the law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, spoke out recently saying that “While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century,”
A spokeswoman for Google has denied the claims but says the company will review the suit. “If we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees,” Gina Scigliano said.ob levels and promotions are determined
“Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions.” Scigliano also added in a statement to the Associated Press.
The New York Times published an article on September 8 of this year reporting that women at Google do make less than men even if they’re working on the same job levels. For example, on average women working at level one jobs at Google make about $15,000 less than men working at the same level. Men’s bonuses are also significantly higher at almost all levels.
Kelly Ellis, one of the women suing Google, says that when she was hired, she was brought in as a level 3 employee, a term of engineers that are new college graduates. Meanwhile a few weeks after Ellis was hired, the company hired a male engineer that had the same years of experience as Kelly but he was hired as a level 4 engineer. This means he was paid a higher salary, he had higher bonuses and he had a more likely chance of getting a promotion.
