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Microsoft Improves Efforts To Offer Equal Pay For Equal Work To Its Employees (windowscentral.com) 201

An anonymous reader writes: One day before National Equal Pay Day, Microsoft has provided a new update on its efforts to provide equal pay for equal work for all of its employees. Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's Executive Vice-President for Human Resources, wrote in a blog post: "Today, for every $1 earned by men, our female employees in the U.S. earn 99.8 cents at the same job title and level. Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. combined earn $1.004 for every $1 earned by their Caucasian counterparts. Breaking it down even further, African American/black employees are at $1.003; Hispanic/Latino(a) employees are at 99.9 cents; and Asian employees are at $1.006 for every $1 earned by Caucasian employees at the same job title and level, respectively." Hogan said she is "encouraged by these results" and that Microsoft will continue to monitor the data and publicly disclose it as part of Microsoft's annual public diversity and inclusion information and data reporting. "Our announcement today is another step forward along the path of greater diversity and inclusion progress at Microsoft, and in society as a whole. Along with our industry peers, the mission of landing intentional, enduring and impactful diversity and inclusion initiatives is one will we continue to pursue vigilantly."
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Microsoft Improves Efforts To Offer Equal Pay For Equal Work To Its Employees

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  • Well done! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @06:42PM (#51887751) Homepage

    Two things /. users love! The pursuit of social equality and Microsoft!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Pursuit being the word. Their average employee age statistics were notably absent despite claims they've made in the past about addressing ageism in their hiring practices.

      • addressing ageism in their hiring practices.

        I demand that companies hire engineers that refuse to learn CAD, switch board operators, buggy whip makers and blacksmiths!

        If there's any common thread I've found among people that can't find jobs and claim it's because of ageism it's that they never kept their resume current. They're the guys that in their 20s were sufficient for getting the job done and never picked up any 'new tricks' into their 50s.

        The guys that always spent a bit of their time learning the new stuff, they've had no problems getting job

  • End this crap (Score:2, Insightful)

    by s.petry ( 762400 )

    Equality in pay for the same job and the same hours is already the law. In fact it has been repeatedly proven that women make more money in the same job as men when they work the same hours and have the same backgrounds.

    Can we please stop perpetuating this bullshit about how everyone should be paid the same as everyone else, no matter what the job is. People need to pay attention to the source of this propaganda. Hint: The people pushing this crap down don't put their own money where their mouths are, a

    • Re:End this crap (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @07:04PM (#51887899)

      Equality in pay for the same job and the same hours is already the law. In fact it has been repeatedly proven that women make more money in the same job as men when they work the same hours and have the same backgrounds.

      Can we please stop perpetuating this bullshit about how everyone should be paid the same as everyone else, no matter what the job is. People need to pay attention to the source of this propaganda. Hint: The people pushing this crap down don't put their own money where their mouths are, and won't. They are ultra rich, and you are a peon.

      Try getting a job while obviously pregnant. Good luck with that.

      • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        I don't see how that addresses his point. It may affect your ability to get a *new* job, and that can be a problem, but it doesn't affect your rate if you're hired. Or if it does, the law requires that the discrepancy be addressed.

        • if P(getting the job) is much lower for an equally qualified woman, then ExpV(being a professional in the job) is much lower for a woman. For the set of all people qualified, the women get less money because they're less likely to get hired.

          Antidiscrimination isn't just about individual salaries of the people who happen to make it--it's about whether you're prejudicing the wages of an entire class of people for a discriminatory reason that society has decided it is not okay to use for discrimination.

          • This is where the salary myth goes haywire. For a whole lot of reasons women tend to work less hours than men. That general rule is backed by US Census data, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Labor, and every other agency that checks statistics including Universities, State agencies, Large companies, etc..etc..

            Do you believe that you working 38 hours a week should make the same wage as someone working 45 hours a week? That is the only way that parity works, unless peopl

            • History (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @11:39PM (#51889211)

              Do you believe that you working 38 hours a week should make the same wage as someone working 45 hours a week? That is the only way that parity works, unless people work the exact same hours at the same job. Which they do not, for all kinds of reasons. Pregnancy for example, women take time off because they are the only gender that can give birth.

              Know your history. Believe it or not, Congress knew and understood very clearly when they passed the Equal Pay Act that it cost businesses more to employ women because of Pregnancy, for example. They had statistics on it, they understood that a purely economic decision would have taken that into account.

              And they decided to pass the equal pay act anyway. Because there are social goals that we are willing to pay money for and make the economy less efficient to achieve. That's why we don't allow slavery. That's why we don't allow child labor. That's why we allow antidiscrimination lawsuits around race.

              It's not perfectly fair to men, of course--it necessarily means that men are cross-subsidizing women and getting paid less. But it's still something we've decided is desirable. If you want to change it, elect a new Congress.

              • by stdarg ( 456557 )

                Because there are social goals that we are willing to pay money for and make the economy less efficient to achieve. That's why we don't allow slavery. That's why we don't allow child labor.

                Slavery is allowed. The 13th amendment has a provision to allow slavery as punishment for a crime. We have slave labor in prisons.

                But you're wrong about the economic argument... slave labor is not more efficient than free market labor, particularly wage slaves and obviously machine labor. The reason slaves make license plates in prisons is that the prisons get a sweetheart deal and it pads their funding... but a wage slave factory in China could turn out better license plates for 1/2 the cost.

                Slavery is an

                • >slave labor is not more efficient than free market labor

                  How exactly would do you expect a free person with some non-destitute standard of living to be able to do a job more cheaply than a slave who need only be provided with the bare minimum of food and shelter necessary to maintain productivity?

                  No, that doesn't necessarily address regional variations in the cost to provide that minimum maintenance. Nor whether some regions have such poorly organized labor that free men are willing to work for such mini

                  • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

                    Slaves have poor productivity and zero incentive.

                    As an "asset", a slave has to be maintained. You can whip slaves and all of that, but all it does is put a slave out of commission. You usually aren't permitted to kill slaves, but even where you are, you just flushed the money you paid for them down the toilet.

                    "Free" but low wage workers must shift for themselves in terms of finding shelter, health care, etc. If that worker does not take care of themselves and dies or is sick, they don't get paid and are

                  • by stdarg ( 456557 )

                    How exactly would do you expect a free person with some non-destitute standard of living to be able to do a job more cheaply than a slave

                    I was talking about overall economic efficiency. It's true that a slave may do the job at hand more cheaply. No doubt that's true in some cases. However, when you pay someone to do the job, and in turn they pay for their own food, electricity, housing, clothing, etc.. you're growing your economy. By giving the person motivation to acquire more stuff (which slaves can't do), there's a decent chance they end up being more productive and competitive. After all there's only so much you can do to motivate slaves

              • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

                Yes, historically Congress passed an unfunded mandate which effectively made women into a class of people who it costs more to employ, with no benefit to the employer.

                And we are surprised that in a scenario where it is difficult to evaluate and confirm the reasons why employers aren't hiring women, that they are, in fact, not hired.

                Now presumably there is some benefit to employing women which makes the extra cost necessary. And if someone could actually identify and quantify that particular set of benefits

                • Yes, historically Congress passed an unfunded mandate which effectively made women into a class of people who it costs more to employ, with no benefit to the employer.

                  Um... no. Women are a class of people who it costs more to employ in many jobs, because they take more leave. Congress didn't make that happen. Biology and social pressures did.

                  Now presumably there is some benefit to employing women which makes the extra cost necessary. And if someone could actually identify and quantify that particular set of benefits, then calculations on the hiring of women can be added to the calculations and appropriate measures can be taken to show that it is a benefit to the bottom line.

                  Yes, the theory is that it is a moral good to pay women equally for the same job, even though they take more leave on average. There may be some substantial second-order economic benefits, but the primary imperative was a normative decision.

                  And let's be honest, just saying "it's fair" is completely bogus. You could say that, *based on one set of priorities*. However, it is distinctly *unfair* if you evaluate another set of priorities. And then you ask yourself, whose priorities are they? Are they an employer's priorities or the government's priorities.

                  Yes, fairness and equality are inherently words subject to nearly infinite malleability.

          • the women get less money because

            Women get less money because most of them tend to make different personal decisions than other people. http://dadatho.me/notebooks/pe... [dadatho.me]

            I'm making 80% of what my peers make. It was my personal decision to leave the work place while my wife kept working. It's not a grand global conspiracy it's Math and Averages.

            Now, if you want to discuss *why* women are leaving that's a separate discussion. But pushing the 78% salary narrative doesn't help you do that because it leads you down the entire wrong path of disc

      • You are attempting to conflate some very separate issues. The one I discussed is gender discrimination, and you are talking about a biological function. Which if you don't take time off for, I will assume there is something wrong with you. Given my assumption, and I realize this is difficult for social justice warriors to do, put yourself in the place of a business owner. Would _you_ hire a pregnant person? If it is not skilled work and easy to replace sure, but the majority of businesses would see th

      • As long as we're going for non-sequiturs, lets go all out. [lmgtfy.com]

        Believe it or not, Congress knew and understood very clearly when they passed the Equal Pay Act that it cost businesses more to employ women because of Pregnancy, for example

        For the same reason it costs more to employ men who are likely to take extended paternity leave or drop out of the workforce entirely for several years. And why they make less money when they rejoin the workforce, with less experience than their former co-workers.

        Equality is nea

    • Re:End this crap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @07:09PM (#51887939)

      Yeah if I had a company, and had to pay women only 77% of what men earn, for precisely the same work, then I would only hire women. It would be a giant cost saving benefit, my company would be doing great.

      But oh, if I ran a company I were an evil capitalist who hates women and wants only men to work, and my hatred towards women would be so big that I only paid them 77 cents on the dollar.

      </sarcasm>

      • But oh, if I ran a company I were an evil capitalist who hates women and wants only men to work, and my hatred towards women would be so big that I only paid them 77 cents on the dollar.

        I see what kind of person you are [youtube.com].

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Employers who do think along those lines tend to also think that the other disadvantages outweigh the lower salary, e.g. maternity leave, more sick days taken, less willingness to do unpaid overtime.

        • by fche ( 36607 )

          ... could it possibly be that maternity leave and more sick days and less willingness to do unpaid overtime have an economic cost? I wonder if there is a quantitative way to measure and express that economic cost.

    • by NoZart ( 961808 )

      Women decide on 80% of all purchases anyway, so who really cares about who makes the money if it's spent unequally.

    • I thought the same thing: "Today, for every $1 earned by men, our female employees in the U.S. earn 99.8 cents at the same job title and level." Isn't this illegal? I wonder if MS will face charges for openly acknowledging illegal gender discrimination.
    • by rioki ( 1328185 )

      At this point I want to remind everybody that Equal Work Fatality Day for 2016 will be held 2037.

  • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby&comcast,net> on Monday April 11, 2016 @06:47PM (#51887779)

    How the hell did one of these equal pay stories get posted where they actually attributed for things like similar job and experience? If they keep this up the 77 cents on the dollar myth will be exposed for the lie that it is.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.... [washingtonexaminer.com]
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/th... [wsj.com]

    • by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @07:04PM (#51887897)

      Its no lie. Its probably true that women get less paid for their work. But that has nothing to do with the fact that they are female. I think nobody is as mean and gives a co-worker less money only because they are female. I think it has another reason, very simple: many women work part-time or work in fields that don't pay much. This has nothing to do with the choice of the individual, I guess any female can have a career as successful as a man, its a question of individual choice not of discrimination.

      Feminists should just realize that most women chose to raise a family instead of focusing their job as much as men. This is nothing bad or something that needs to be changed. Its free people doing a free choice, and feminists are constantly trying to take that freedom away.

      By saying that females who chose to raise their children and do part time work instead of full time work and letting some stranger raise the child are limited and backwards-minded, the feminists just insult millions of females having chosen precisely that model together with their partners.

      If a woman wants to let a stranger raise her children, or if she wants the man to take over those duties, its perfectly fine. Just feminists shouldn't dictate what's wrong or right.

      • According to the Freakonomics guy you are partly correct but they found there's still about an 8% difference that can't be accounted for by anything but gender difference.

        • Men negotiate harder. That may be a "gender difference" but I don't see how you could fault men for it.

          • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @09:55PM (#51888771) Journal

            Men can negotiate harder. The same studies have shown that when women negotiate the way men normally do, they're written down as "bitchy" (whereas men get labeled as "assertive").

        • Do researchers ever ask specific questions, as in talk to managers and ask them about specific individuals to find the reason or will they forever look at to level numbers and speculate?
      • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2016 @12:40AM (#51889457)

        Its no lie.

        But it is, for reasons you even list:

        many women work part-time or work in fields that don't pay much. This has nothing to do with the choice of the individual, I guess any female can have a career as successful as a man, its a question of individual choice not of discrimination. Feminists should just realize that most women chose to raise a family instead of focusing their job as much as men.

        If a man worked part time or stepped out of the work force for ten years to be a stay-at-home dad, he, too, would make less money than his co-workers that went on with their careers - male or female.

        What feminists are actually demanding is equal pay for less work. Less hours on the job, less experience, and in less stressful or physically dangerous positions.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          What feminists are actually asking for is that men take on a more equal share of the child rearing duties. If everyone who had kids wanted a good work/life balance and parental leave it would reduce the career damage it does. Rather than a choice between "man who is unlikely to want paternity leave" vs. "woman who might want maternity leave" it should just be "pick the best candidate and accept that most human beings have a family at some point in their lifetime".

          Some northern European countries have made g

          • I have very rarely heard this position made explicit. For anyone holding this view, I would say they should stop focusing on "pay equity for women", which has (mostly) been achieved on a per-hour basis, and instead focus on "benefit equity for men":

            Require companies to offer equal amounts of maternity and paternity leave for starters, maybe even make it mandatory to change cultural norms. Perhaps follow up with an push to eliminate the tendency of salaried men to work disproportionately longer hours - eit

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            What feminists are actually asking for is that men take on a more equal share of the child rearing duties.

            Then they can work more hours so their partners can spend more time at home. But how is that addressed by the sloganeering of "equal pay for equal work" and "women make 76 cents on the dollar"?

      • by fuzzyf ( 1129635 )

        If the parents wants to let a stranger raise their children, or if they decides that either one of them take over those duties, its perfectly fine. Just feminists shouldn't dictate what's wrong or right.

        Equal :)

      • many women ... work in fields that don't pay much

        There's a long history of jobs primarily occupied by women being worse paid than jobs primarily occupied by men, even when the jobs have similar requirements, difficulty, etc.

        • If you look at historic times, there has been undoubtedly discrimination of the sexes, so its not a good comparison to take for the present.

          But more importantly, Correlation does not imply causation. It is possible that the field got less paying because of the presence of women, but it is also possible that the women populated the field because it became less paying, the men leaving for fields that became higher paying.

          As a possible explanation: In the past, and still today, the prevailing model is that the

    • This statistics used here are for within Microsoft, not for either the industry or the workforce as a whole. I'm not aware of any claims that women or minorities at Microsoft were making 77 cents per dollar their white male colleagues get.

      Even if what you claim - that the 77 cent thing is a myth and a lie - is true, your ideological bias is showing really, really strongly here. If you want to be taken seriously, try to avoid equating two completely unequal things (Microsoft's compensation and the workforce

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are two numbers, the adjusted number where the average is about 95-96% and the unadjusted figure that is in the upper 70s. Both have their uses.

      The adjusted figure shows that when women do get jobs they are paid about 5% less on average. It can be attributed to things like salary negotiations favouring men or other institutional biases.

      The unadjusted figure shows that women end up in different kinds of work than men. This is more controversial because some argue that it's natural, while others argue t

    • by kwoff ( 516741 )
      I guess this is under the umbrella of Simpson's paradox [wikipedia.org]. The summary and blog linked to don't seem to show numbers of people in each category; for example, $1.003 for blacks but there could be only 1% black employees. And like your links say, things can be sliced in other ways too, like what number of this or that category are part time versus full time, interns/age/experience, carreer choices/preferences, etc.
  • Right. The following water cooler dialogue comes to mind:

    - How goes it, Joe?

    - Alright, just scored a 3% raise.

    - How come?

    - Well, Bob, it turns out my great-great-grand-mother was Japanese. So, I ticked the right box on the "race" questionnaire as there are just so very few of us here in the Mid West.

  • So, if it's equal pay for equal work, then why is there disparity between the segmentation? It seems like a company as big as Microsoft could do the math and get it to average out to a flat 1.00 for everyone.
  • Social pressure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @07:07PM (#51887917) Journal

    I'm not sure how to explain this without sounding like a misogynist, but careers are often more important to men because men are more often judged by income. There is strong social pressure on men to work hard for raises and promotions because of this. Women tend to be socially judged on looks, not earnings, and thus they focus more on that.

    This is not saying women are inherently lazy, only that there is less social pressure on them to succeed in the work-place, and thus more women on average just coast in their career.

    Women also end up having to deal with family issues more, in part because they care more about family and home, and in part because men are on average domestically flaky. This means women will focus on domestic issues more, distracting them from career.

    I'm not sure how to measure or address these, but if they are not addressed, there could be some unpleasant side-effects.

    • Women also end up having to deal with family issues more, in part because they care more about family and home, and in part because men are on average domestically flaky.

      Whoa now, I get where you're coming with this, but your wording choice is poor. Time was there was a gendered based split of responsibilities; men brought home the cash, women took care of the children and house. That isn't men being "domestically flaky". Now a days that's even less true; more and more men are working their asses off, m

    • by tsotha ( 720379 )

      I'm not sure how to explain this without sounding like a misogynist, but careers are often more important to men because men are more often judged by income.

      I've always thought a good measure of the health of a society is the extent to which obvious truths can be articulated and obvious falsehoods challenged. The fact that you (quite justifiably) feel you have to preemptively shield yourself from allegations of misogyny for stating something this obvious is a sad commentary on our times.

    • Women also end up having to deal with family issues more, in part because they care more about family and home, and in part because men are on average domestically flaky.

      What you have just said is that men get paid more in part because they're less competent. Just thought I'd point it out.

  • by kick6 ( 1081615 ) on Monday April 11, 2016 @07:12PM (#51887945) Homepage
    if they're salaried it's not equal pay for equal work as women take more sick days. First link I found says SIGNIFICANTLY more. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
    • I haven't taken a sick day in nearly ten years.
      Oh yeah, that reminds me, I've never worked for a company that offered sick days. Oh well.
    • Well then they ought to be paying women MORE. Having toxic idiots "manfully" struggle into the office to spread disease everywhere and infect everyone else is a fantastic way of wrecking productivity.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday April 12, 2016 @04:43AM (#51889987) Homepage Journal

      Another way to look at this is that men don't take enough sick days. They would rather come in to work feeling unwell, be unproductive and infect everyone else, than ask for a day to recover. I used to be like that, until my boss encouraged me to take more days, and then I realized I can get over a cold in a day or two instead of a week if I just rest properly.

      Plus, women tend to take on more childcare than men, so some of the time is used for that and again men should be taking more to look after their kids.

  • After reading just the title I was prepared to be floored by an announcement that Microsoft had cut executive pay by a huge amount and given raises to everyone else in the company. Instead it's just another gender story, of how many? Great.

    I mean, I guess what they're saying is good and all, it sorta sounds good(ish), but it's hardly noteworthy. You can achieve gender/race parity just by offering fixed salaries for given roles and refusing to negotiate. It's a pretty common practice.
  • http://www.theguardian.com/mon... [theguardian.com]
    "Women in 20s earn more than men"

    Women are already making more than men as is

    • If you set things so you can't pay women less than men, it's inevitable they will earn more.

    • Well, yeah, if you don't correct for education then of course people at the age of "right out of college" will earn more; more women get degrees! This is an unsurprising result of looking at the earning potential of those with and without a degree, and then looking at the gender ratio of college graduates. True, some of the high-paying skilled fields are male-dominated (software being an obvious example), but those don't make up for the relative dearth of men with a tertiary degree in general.

      The fact that

  • If they want to offer 100% pay, why don't they just do it? I mean they seem to be really close to it, what's the point in not saying "that's our contract, it was made before we knew your gender, because that's what you earn on that position"?

Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags. -- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"

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