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from the they-are-just-holding-the-numbers-wrong dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Apple is the latest tech company to close its pay gap.
Women and minorities at Apple earn the same amount of money as their white, male co-workers in similar roles, the company said Wednesday.
Apple released its annual inclusion and diversity report, saying the company had achieved pay equity.
"Women earn one dollar for every dollar male employees earn. And underrepresented minorities earn one dollar for every dollar white employees earn," the report said. To put things in perspective, the White House says that in the US, women earn 78 cents to the dollar.
The pay gap is one of many issues related to diversity that companies in the tech industry face. Silicon Valley has had to confront tough questions about the treatment of women and minorities in tech, and the industry continues to struggle with issues surrounding recruitment, retention and promotion.
Apple isn't the first tech company to say it's reached equal pay. In April, Facebook and Microsoft also said they had no gender pay gap.
Apple's latest report shows that in 2016, 72 percent of the company's leadership is male, while only 28 percent is female. Whites make up 67 percent, Asians 21 percent, blacks 3 percent, Hispanics 7 percent, and 1 percent in leadership roles are multiracial. The balance is made up of other ethnicities and employees who didn't declare.
Apple's report also shows that overall, the company is 68 percent male and 32 percent female this year -- a move of one percentage point from last year when Apple reported 69 percent male and 31 percent female. Fifty-six percent of US employees at Apple are white, 19 percent are Asian, 9 percent are black, 12 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are multiracial ethnicities.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @07:18PM
I hear people complain about pay gap in the news but frankly I don't understand the arguments.
If women are performing the exact same work as men for less money, then as a business you should obviously hire only women in order to reduce expenses. At least in high tech, there appears to be no evidence of this happening, so that seems to imply there is no significant pay gap.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 05 2016, @08:00PM
Maybe the maternity leave evens out with the less pay?
There have been studies done that demonstrate that all-male or all-female groups solve problems better than mixed company. When you're talking about a whole company I suppose you could separate them out somewhat by team.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 05 2016, @08:00PM
If women are performing the exact same work as men for less money, then as a business you should obviously hire only women in order to reduce expenses.
Sure, unless the business considers females to be inferior. Then they wouldn't.
And, when they did hire women, they would probably pay them less.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Friday August 05 2016, @08:06PM
This is a common fallacy I see bandied about but does not make any sense at all so should really stop.
The theory is (NB: whether it is true or not is irrelevant to this argument) women are not being underpaid because their ability is being undervalued compare to men.
So it CANNOT follow that the primarily male managers will be hiring exclusively women to reduce costs because they wont see the additional value.
If they cannot see the additional value then they wont be able to do the calculation you are claiming.
Maybe there are some people out there that ARE doing that; bucking the mainstream. But they will not be in the majority according to the theory.
Is it actually true? I am not wading into that mess...
(Score: 3, Informative) by quintessence on Friday August 05 2016, @08:40PM
It's not that clear-cut.
Suppose a company needed to hire certain positions RIGHT NOW, they might be willing to pay a little more. Even paying more than people currently in that position are making.
Eventually talk around the water-cooler gets around, people note the discrepancy, and the imagination goes wild at what the cause might be.
Place I work at is going through that right now, with new hires making significantly more than the old guard. There are lots of recriminations at what the causes might be, and HR is staring down a discrimination suit or possibly a mass exodus (they've already lost quite a few people), and now there is the possibility of retention bonuses attempting to make-up the gap and fast-tracking raises for certain employees.
But taking a snapshot now from the outside, it doesn't look good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @11:37PM
Not to mention the fact that every bean counter seems to forget that salary is a two-way argument. I was 16 years old the last time I had a job where the pay rate wasn't negotiable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @11:42PM
Why did/do people not hire blacks for a job if they could do it? Racism does still exist in hiring to some extent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 06 2016, @12:12AM
Citation: http://www.economist.com/node/17311877 [economist.com]
Please note: South Korea, not USA.