Google ordered to pay $1.1 million for gender discrimination

Ulku Rowe, Google Cloud engineering director, filed a lawsuit claiming the company awarded higher salaries to less-experienced male executives hired for similar roles simultaneously.

San Francisco: Google will have to pay $1.1 million to a company executive who filed a complaint against the tech giant for gender-based discrimination, a jury in the US has ruled.

The lawsuit by Google Cloud engineering director Ulku Rowe had alleged that the company gave higher pay to less-experienced male executives who were hired for similar roles at the same time.

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She alleged that Google also denied her promotions in response to her complaints.

The New York jury ordered Google to pay Rowe for both punitive damages and pain and suffering, reports Bloomberg Law.

In an email sent to The Verge, Attorney Cara Green of Outten & Golden said that the “unanimous verdict not only validates Rowe’s allegations of mistreatment by Google,” but that it sends a message that “discrimination and retaliation will not be tolerated in the workplace.”

Green credited “the efforts of thousands of Googlers who walked out in 2018 and demanded reforms.”

Around 20,000 Googlers had protested in 2018 against the Internet giant’s handling of sexual harassment and, more broadly, its workplace policies around equity and transparency.

The protest followed an article in The New York Times that spoke about sexual misconduct allegations against senior executives, specifically against Android creator Andy Rubin.

He later denied the claims.

In Rowe’s case, the jury decided that Google did commit gender-based discrimination.

Rowe had 23 years of experience when she started at Google in 2017.