Three women have filed a lawsuit in a California court naming tech giant Google as a defendant, claiming a discriminatory pattern of treatment against female employees. They allege, among other things, that Google has systematically paid female workers at lower rates than males performing comparable work.
The three women are demanding a jury trial and claim their situations are representative of all women who work for Google. According to the complaint, one of the women left Google in 2014 due to the company’s sexist culture. The complaint alleges that she was moved into a front-end position because of a false perception at Google that back-end engineering is more rigorous. Her observation was that almost all back-end engineering positions were held by men.
The U.S. Department of Labor also filed a lawsuit against Google after it found evidence of a gender pay gap there. The lawsuit filed by the three women is likely to draw on the analysis performed by the Department of Labor, which found a disparity when examining salaries paid to 21,000 men and women working at Google headquarters in Mountain View.
A spokesperson for Google said the company plans to seriously review the lawsuit and that it disagrees with the suit’s central allegations. Google makes use of promotion and hiring committees and multiple checks to eliminate gender bias.
In a case where an individual believes he or she has been affected by workplace discrimination on the basis of gender, the individual may be entitled to recover for damages. An attorney with experience in employment law may be able to help by examining the facts of the situation and initiating negotiations with the employer.