TECH NEWS – Because they don’t get paid as much as their male counterparts, and because they represent more than 12,000 engineering, marketing and AppleCare colleagues, the two women have taken on a big task.

On Thursday, the two women filed a lawsuit in a California court against Apple for paying female employees far less than their male counterparts. It’s gender discrimination, and the Cupertino-based tech giant isn’t the only one doing it: in the past, Google and Oracle have had to pay substantial damages for similar reasons. The lawsuit highlighted Apple’s hiring practices and performance evaluation habits, which resulted in a gender pay gap.

According to Engadget, female employees said the disparity was systematic and stemmed from the company basing pay rates on past salaries. Apple took note of these potentially discriminatory issues and instead asked about the potential candidate’s salary expectations. This question was also linked to prior salaries, presumably for the same purpose. These job selection criteria led to an established pattern of underpaying female employees.

“Apple’s policy or practice of collecting information about salary expectations and using that information to set starting salaries had the effect of perpetuating past pay disparities and paying women less than men performing substantially similar work,” the lawsuit states. Female employees also highlighted the performance evaluation system and how some evaluation categories (e.g., leadership) are very critical for female employees. It is alleged that women are evaluated differently for the same performance. Because of the different scoring, bonuses and salary increases were not given to women at Apple.

By 2021, an internal survey had already revealed a startling pay gap between male and female Apple employees, and the company stopped those internal surveys rather than take corrective action. According to the lawsuit, Apple allegedly violated California’s Equal Pay Act, and the plaintiffs are now seeking damages for underpayment and an injunction to stop the violation.

Not surprisingly, Apple has yet to respond to the case.

Source: WCCFTech, Engadget