"However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we’ve made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail. These requests include thousands of employees’ private contact information which we safeguard rigorously."
[0] https://www.law360.com/articles/877558/dol-sues-google-over-...
No. Here's how it actually works in a modern family unit in a high-earning, dual-income Silicon Valley household:
Mommy takes time off when babby is born, as does daddy because it's not 1960. At some point during this sabbatical help is hired, and then mommy and daddy go back to work and establish their new work/home balance. The end.
It's not conceptually that different than sabbaticals not involving babies. It certainly doesn't explain systemic pay discrimination.
This affects negatively many future years of income, because your future prospects are affected by your current job.
So you should see an effect on family income but divergences in gendered income.
I'm sure sabbaticals (and even vacations) hurt careers in some scenarios, at some companies. I was responding to the notion that this was "retirement", and unique to the woman.
> You don't get a raise and a bonus for being away 1 year when you are 25-30.
People take parental leave for weeks (6-8 is typical), not a year.
Suppose the population is distributed in their experience and productivity, and that you can measure these to some extent.
Suppose your field has way more males than females. This is not your fault, more of a pipeline thing, but you want to be more equal internally than the outside world is. Most people commend this kind of thing.
If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you necessarily have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them?
I'm not saying any of this is how it ought to be, just that it seems like a typical conclusion with napkin math, and would result in these allegations while Google is actually trying to do good.
Interestingly if equal pay were not a thing, I would expect the opposite headline: That Google would pay women much more than men to work so that they could attempt to correct a gender imbalance internally that exists in the external population (software workers).