WHOOPS

Google Found It Was Underpaying More Men Than Women for Same Work

The company’s lead analyst for pay equity said it was a “surprising trend that we didn’t expect.”

A study by Google found that more of its male employees were making less money than women for “similar work,” The New York Times reports. The study reportedly found that Google managers decided to give more pay raises to women than men to “account for factors like how they were compensated relative to their peers.” That adjustment, according to to the Times, created a “pronounced” wage gap between women and men among “lower-level software engineers”—which is one of the company’s largest groups of employees. In response to the finding, the company reportedly gave $9.7 million in additional compensation to 10,677 employees for this year, although it is unclear exactly how many men were in that group. The company reportedly said it that it did not find that women were “receiving more discretionary pay” than their male peers. Lauren Barbato, Google’s lead analyst for pay equity, told the newspaper that the finding was a “surprising trend that we didn’t expect.”