Apple punishes women for same behaviors that get men promoted, lawsuit says ( arstechnica.com )

Apple has spent years "intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately paying women less than men for substantially similar work," a proposed class action lawsuit filed in California on Thursday alleged.

A victory for women suing could mean that more than 12,000 current and former female employees in California could collectively claw back potentially millions in lost wages from an apparently ever-widening wage gap allegedly perpetuated by Apple policies.

The lawsuit was filed by two employees who have each been with Apple for more than a decade, Justina Jong and Amina Salgado. They claimed that Apple violated California employment laws between 2020 and 2024 by unfairly discriminating against California-based female employees in Apple’s engineering, marketing, and AppleCare divisions and "systematically" paying women "lower compensation than men with similar education and experience."

intensely_human ,

I bet it actually punishes highly agreeable people for the same behaviors that get disagreeable people promoted.

sparkle ,
@sparkle@lemm.ee avatar

Speaking about culture, women who are confident in their engagement/initiative and take charge, or simply don't let themselves get talked over, are generally seen as "bitchy" or something similar (when a man doing the same thing is seen as normal or a good trait). Women being not allowed to "speak out of place" has morphed into it being seen as bad when they're dominant or demand anything, even respect; they're expected to fit a certain archetype of being submissive or extraordinarily "pleasing" to the others (especially men) they work with. Women are talked over all the time in meetings, but it'd be a problem if they expressed issue with that or if they talked over others.

Even superiors who are women will often refuse to give other equally-performing (or even better-performing) women employees raises because of the non-explicit but powerful social pressure of male peers, or how it would reflect on them to their male peers. Society encourages "competition".

My elaboration of your comment would be that "two people who are otherwise the same that have different external traits may be seen as having unequally agreeability, and therefore, have unequal mobility in a given hierarchy", which conveniently applies to more than just gender and sex but anything else that affects appearance (body shape & color, voice, even clothing/cultural presentation to an extent), although I'd say in the workplace sex is more important than other "innate" characteristics (ethnicity/name discrimination might be up there though); but that doesn't roll off the tongue...

idiomaddict ,

Or disagreeable men are “strong and purposeful” but disagreeable women are “bitchy.”

Akisamb ,

Separately, Jong has also alleged that Apple subjected her to a hostile work environment after a senior member of her team, Blaine Weilert, sexually harassed her. After she complained, Apple investigated and Weilert reportedly admitted to touching her "in a sexually suggestive manner without her consent," the complaint said. Apple then disciplined Weilert but ultimately would not allow Jong to escape the hostile work environment, requiring that she work with Weilert on different projects. Apple later promoted Weilert.

As a result of Weilert's promotion, the complaint said that Apple placed Weilert in a desk "sitting adjacent" to Jong's in Apple’s offices. Following a request to move her desk, a manager allegedly "questioned" Jong's "willingness to perform her job and collaborate" with Weilert, advising that she be “professional, respectful, and collaborative,” rather than honoring her request for a non-hostile workplace.

...

sparkle ,
@sparkle@lemm.ee avatar

Average work experience for a woman

Sentau ,

Pretty disappointing state of affairs this. People should really be doing better when it comes to treating women with respect

Kecessa , (edited )

I'm my province companies over a certain size (even those with a union) have to go through an evaluation process every 5 years to evaluate wages to prevent these situations. I know one person who got a 17% boost to her salary one year through this process and I also used to work a job where the employees in my department were mostly women and the employer and union were forced to sign a letter of agreement to increase everyone's wage in that department because it was lower than a similar job in another department with mostly men staff.

a_wild_mimic_appears ,

I really can't compute why any reputable corp is still shitting the bed regarding equal pay in fucking 2024.

Tolookah ,

Because in Apple's mine, what equality is bringing down all salaries to the lowest common denominator, not bringing up salaries. They want to pay the bare minimum, and want to do it while complaining that it's too much

dependencyinjection ,

I worked for Apple in the UK and retail workers there were paid more than any other retailer. We got stock every year, massive discounts, free services, private healthcare and more.

I worked the Genius Bar and we got paid even more and as a Technical Specialist it was essentially just customer service with some diagnostics.

I loved my three years there, it was hard work, but the days went incredibly fast if you could be a fake extrovert and loved talking to customers and going from one to the next.

I may be biased as working there changed my life so much. Through the healthcare I got diagnosed with ADHD and subsequently made some incredible changes to my life and now I have my dream job as a software developer due to their encouragement to improve yourself. It helped to be surrounded by people that were very talented outside of work, like artists, photographers, musicians, etc. at first I felt out of my depth as I felt like an imposter, I’d had 50+ jobs before there and I was a lower class in terms of education and where I came from.

One thing I will say is that a lot of staff who had only ever worked there were a bit spoilt and complained about things I never would as compared to every job I had before it was like heaven. They actually trusted us, gave us autonomy and really cared.

I had a breakdown after quitting Xanax and the level of support I received was second to none.

I was also blessed as the GB manager was a really good dude and he would go to bat for us all at any point and didn’t take shit.

One time a customer clicked his fingers at the manager and he was like who you clicking at I ain’t a dog lol.

They would back you up too, if I was saying no to a customer. Like no the iPad screen didnt just break on it own and they escalated they would 99% of the time back you up. Where call centres would be like these are the rules but every time someone complained they be like yeah bro we will bend the rules for you.

jol ,

Because sexism is caused by systemic bias. The gender gap is often not caused by actions, but by inaction, and companies need to work against the status quo.

PP_BOY_ , (edited )
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Apple sucks, has always sucked, and anyone who ever wasted their labor towards that Ziggurat of western excess deserves all the acid rainfall of western doublethink

FTFY

ETA: Foxconn (I.O.W. the people actually responsible for making Apple products) literally built nets around their factories to prevent their employees from killing themselves by jumping out of the windows. Do with that information what you will.

Kecessa ,

Source on that last part?

Sunlightl ,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

https://www.wired.com/2010/08/foxconn-rallies-workers-installs-suicide-nets/

Sir_Kevin ,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/34a874e4-284a-4475-8600-bb24ebeae2d7.webp

Here's what they look like if anyone's wondering.

Railcar8095 ,

Notable products manufactured by Foxconn include the BlackBerry,[6] iPad,[7] iPhone, iPod,[8] Kindle,[9] all Nintendo gaming systems since the GameCube, Nintendo DS models, Sega models, Nokia devices, Cisco products, Sony devices (including most PlayStation gaming consoles), Google Pixel devices, Xiaomi devices, every successor to Microsoft's Xbox console,[10] and several CPU sockets, including the TR4 CPU socket on some motherboards. As of 2012, Foxconn factories manufactured an estimated 40% of all consumer electronics sold worldwide.[11]

Foxconn is used by A LOT of companies. While I'm always ready to shit on apple for their double standards, let's not pretend they are the only ones. All those in the quote and many more deserve their share of shitting on.

To be clear, I'm not whatabouting, it's more "yes, and let's have the rest accountable too". I know you're not saying they only produce Apple, but this is overlooked too often

Mango ,

Sounds like they make everything that sucks.

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