Equal Pay No Way

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When the Supreme Court ruled last month that employees will now have just 180 days to sue an employer for pay discrimination, I waited for the angry uproar. But all I heard were some unsurprising sound bites from Hillary Clinton and a few other Democrats who said they would fight back legislatively. Where the hell was all the righteous indignation from the women upon whom this ruling will have an impact?

Okay, it’s not like actual bra burning is called for. But come on, ladies, who among us actually thinks she would know within six months of getting a job, raise, or bonus if she were being paid less based on gender? The 5-4 ruling even prompted the only woman justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to read aloud her dissenting opinion, a rare occurrence that signaled her frustration. Ginsburg said the court’s interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not “in tune with the realities of the workplace.” That’s an understatement.

Let’s revisit reality for a moment. Women have made great strides, but wage discrimination remains a very big problem. In 2005, median weekly pay for full-time female workers was only 81 percent of what their male counterparts made, according to the latest information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Just days after the court’s ruling, a high-ranking female lawyer for General Electric—a company widely hailed as a leader in facilitating women’s career advancement—sued the firm. The lawsuit accused G.E. of paying female employees in entry-level executive positions less money than their male peers and of failing to promote female executives at a comparable rate. Like the Supreme Court decision, the G.E. case received only a perfunctory amount of press.

It’s not that women in business aren’t upset. One of them is Patricia Sueltz, C.E.O. of SurfControl, an internet-security firm that is in the process of being acquired by Websense for $400 million. Like many of the women I’ve talked to in the past few weeks, she finds the decision “appalling.” As Sueltz puts it, “How on earth would you know” within 180 days if pay disparity was a factor?

Her own experience, working for several large and respected technology organizations that I agreed not to identify for this column, fuels her rancor. Years ago, Sueltz and her husband began working for the same company at the same time, a situation that gave both of them rare, detailed access to coworker salaries and performance reviews. In the beginning, Sueltz’s husband earned $1,000 more per year because, says Sueltz, he had an M.B.A. Fair enough, I say. But over time, Sueltz was promoted faster, and the couple was “at nearly the same pace and got praised the same,” says Sueltz. Even though she and her husband were at the same level, she says, “within three years, he made 17 percent more than I did; within five years or so, he was making 25 percent more.” Sueltz finally broached the issue with a superior: “I said, ‘I am really embarrassed to bring this up because I never talk about salary, but there seems to be a [pay] disparity between me and my husband.’” As she recalls, “He looked me right in the eye, he did not even flinch, and said, ‘That is because you are a woman.’”

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