Google’s pay gap between its male and female employees at its Irish operations stands at 5 per cent in favour of men, the company has said.
The tech giant, which employs 5,500 staff at Google Ireland and Google Cloud EMEA, published the figures in its Gender Pay Gap (GPG) report for 2022. This is the first year that organisations with more than 250 people are required to report data on the difference in the average hourly wage and bonuses of men and women across the workplace. It compares the pay of all men and women, rather than just those working in similar jobs, with similar experience, skills and qualifications.
The mean pay gap reported by the company is lower than the national average, which is believed to be about 14 per cent, and significantly lower than the EU average of between 16 and 17 per cent. It is also better than the Google UK’s binary gender pay gap of 15 per cent.
Google said the pay gap was mainly due to a lack of representation of women in senior leadership and technical roles, rather than unequal pay for the same roles. It has already pledged to address this disparity.
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“Specifically, the gaps we are seeing have been, and continue to be driven, by a lack of representation of women in senior leadership and technical roles, which is not unusual in our industry, but is being recognised and addressed,” Google said in the report. “We have more men than women in these roles – and these roles are paid more based on the market rates for these types of roles and experience.”
Bonuses were more equal, with 96 per cent of men at Google Ireland receiving a bonus versus 94 per cent of women. The company’s breakdown of pay levels indicates 60 per cent of the top-paid employees at Google Ireland are male.
There was a greater pay gap in the Google Cloud business, where it was 27 per cent in favour of women, due to a number of women in senior roles. This is despite 77 per cent of people in the top-pay quartile being male.
However, although it is a growing business, Google employs only 300 people in that division. Google Cloud was formed in 2021 to encompass the cloud business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This saw all Google Cloud and Google Workspace accounts, as well as contracts of customers, partners and partners with a billing address in EMEA, move from Google Ireland and Google Commerce to Google Cloud EMEA.
“We are making progress in narrowing our gender pay gap across Google Ireland, but we know there is more to do to increase representation of women in senior leadership positions and engineering roles,” a spokesperson for Google said. “We’ll keep working with our colleagues and the wider industry to drive progress in diversity, equity and inclusion and further enhance our culture of belonging for everyone at Google.”
