Former female employees of Google have won class-action status to represent almost 11,000 women over claims that the search giant pays men more for doing the same job.
A San Francisco state judge approved the class action suit on Thursday, which will now allow the four lead plaintiffs to represent thousands of women in a case that seeks approximately $600 million in damages due to the gender-pay disparity, Bloomberg reported.
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“This is a significant day for women at Google and in the technology sector, and we are so proud of our brave clients for leading the way,” Kelly Dermody, a lawyer representing the women, said in an email to Bloomberg. “This order shows that it is critical that companies prioritize paying women equitably over spending money fighting them in litigation.”
The lawsuit alleges Google violated California’s Equal Pay Act and says that the tech giant paid its female employees almost $17,000 less every year compared to male employees in the same roles.
The lawsuit is unique because female engineers at other Big Tech companies such as Microsoft and Twitter have not succeeded at winning class-action status for their gender-bias suits.
Google said that for most of the past decade, it has done internal audits regarding salaries, bonuses, and stock options to ensure they are fairly distributed.
“If we find any differences in proposed pay, including between men and women, we make upward adjustments to remove them before new compensation goes into effect,” the company said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
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The full court trial for the class-action suit is expected to start sometime in 2022.
