SAN FRANCISCO – A litany of media reports highlighting the progressive ideals of Silicon Valley do little to improve on this basic fact: women working in the Bay Area tech world make markedly less than their male counterparts.
Occupy.com spoke with a number of women who work, or have worked, in Silicon Valley and what they said reflects a growing male hegemony in "Inequality Valley." Simply put, women receive less salary than their male colleagues for the same job.
Ask Hillary, a top chef at the Google campus in Mountain View, where she runs a kitchen that is just one of dozens of restaurants housed in the massive facility. While she may appear to be on equal footing with her male counterparts, Hillary's pay stub tells a different story: she is paid only half what other men in the same chef position are being paid.
“It was shocking when I found out,” she said. “I am battling for my rights at the moment and hope that in the end, women will be paid the same as men because that is the right of all people: to equal pay.”
It may seem odd that in an area that's not only the summit of global technology but which also prides itself on progressive attitudes and far-sighted worldviews, women face a difficult ascent to reaching basic pay equity with men. According to John I., a former chef at Google, it reflects the male-centric view of the “market” in a Silicon Valley culture that appears at times to forget women even exist.
“When I was working there, the amount of sexual jokes about women, talking about who wants to get with any woman who walked by, were so common that it created an environment where women were nothing more than the meat we cooked,” he said, adding “there is absolutely no surprise that female chefs are getting paid less than men. This is the culture of the place.”
Hillary is not alone – and it isn’t just at the culinary branch of Google where women suffer the indignity and injustice of lower pay for equal work. Rita, from India, moved to Silicon Valley where she has plied her trade for the past four years as a programmer.
“It is not too common to have female programmers and especially not Indian women right now,” she said. “So I was excited to get to America and do some good work. Then I got here and started to find out I was only being paid around 60 percent of what my other male programmers were getting. I was angry.”
Rita complained to her male supervisor who promised to look into the issue. Then he came back with an answer and she was shocked.
“He told me that I needed more training and experience before I would get a raise. I told him that I have the same training and education that the others have. He was very dismissive about the issue,” Rita said.
“So I went higher and only then, when the top leaders at the company took notice after I threatened a lawsuit, things began to change. I am still not paid the same amount as the men, but it is close.”
Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg writes in her book Lean In that women demanding equal pay are often seen as “pushy,” not only in the tech world but in jobs across America.
The online magazine Slate published a number of articles showing that women job applicants who asked for more money, putting them on par with their male colleagues, were actually refused employment offers. To many, the glass ceiling looks as real today as it does in a Mad Men episode portraying American life decades ago.
A 2006 study by Linda Babcock, Hannah Riley Bowles and Lei Lai reported that both male and female supervisors were more likely not to hire and/or work well with a woman who had asked for a raise. Yet, while those women are seen as aggressive and "in your face," men who ask for raises are viewed as ambitious.
Amid the tech largesse of Silicon Valley, the problem appears even more acute than elsewhere. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in the heart of the region, Santa Clara Country, the median salary for men is around $91,000. For women, it hovers around $56,000. And according to this report, the pay gap is only growing wider with time.
Yet, hard as it is to believe, oversight of the problem remains virtually absent. Companies like Google, Facebook and others have repeatedly refused to release, and fought against, the publication of their demographics including gender and ethnic make-up as well as how much individual employees are paid. The lack of transparency has led to frustration and difficult litigating procedures to resolve certain cases of pay discrepancy.
“I have spoken to a number of lawyers who are fighting for me on this issue, but without a subpoena to get accurate figures, it is hard to make a case even though I know from talking to others that I am paid less than men,” Hillary added.
Even the former Secretary of State and probable Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, has lashed out at the unequal pay in Silicon Valley.
"You're not talking about just people who are at the bottom of the income scale,” Clinton said during a recent West Coast trip. “Inequality of the kind that we are now experiencing is bad for individuals, bad for our economy, bad for our democracy."
The question is how long it will take – and what kind of woman-organized workers movement must emerge – before the unequal status quo in Silicon Valley gets a makeover.
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