There is no such thing as equal pay for equal work. Two people within the same gender aren't paid equal in the Tech or any Professional services Industry forget across genders. More importantly, can someone define what equal work is? Same role/title doesn't translate to equal work. Every person has different capabilities even within in the same role and if it happens to be that a Woman outperforms than her peers then she should be paid equal or more and I wholeheartedly support that but the sad part with Women is that they never talk about such cases but instead Just hangs on to the phrase "Equal pay for Equal work" so they know if they make enough noise they can get equal pay but they never mention a word about equal work. And after working for 10 years in the Industry (which means I am young so don't think I am talking about some B.C era) and statistically speaking most of the time it had always been men who did tasks that are above and beyond from their regular duties.
Sheryl Sandberg Just spits out some none sense. She just got so Lucky to be the COO at FB in the first place. she thinks that if a company can control # years of experience, education level, and blah blah then that will be the deciding factor for Equal pay. I am like really? So two people with same amount of years of experience can perform the same way? Two people with the same education level are equally bright? What if one person went to college Doofus and another went to Stanford? I am sure going to better college doesn't automatically translate into a bright and efficient person for the company but it is an accomplishment one should acknowledge for their hard work. so in short, none of these factors can be controlled and the way most companies Judge pay depends on how well one performs in the Interview which is very much reasonable. If we do the Sheryl Sandberg way we actually don't need an HR department (which Btw, is lot of Women) we can just write a program to accept or reject applicants if is really that straight forward to control the factors she is talking about. I think it would be great if someone can actually make Sheryl Sandberg to code on a daily basis and deal with all the production issues.
I went to an Ivy League school and I worked as a TA for many Computer Science courses. I had worked with many students (both Men and Women) I had seen them getting Jobs at Google and FB and whenever they told me they got into Google or FB I used to ask my students so What questions did they ask you? Typically it is Algorithms most of the time as we all know and I can for sure say that the Algorithms questions asked to Men are way Significantly harder than Women. Now why is this not highlighted? Because companies like Google, FB wants to highlight that they hired Women. I bet my entire savings (I truly mean it) that if I go Google even today and pick random sample of 50 (25 Men Vs 25 Women) and randomly ask the Algorithm questions Men will significantly outperform Women because I know the level of difficulty questions asked for a Women and Men to get into Google. This is totally unfair. And I hate Men for giving up on these issues.
I am sure most companies know all of this. They want to pay equal because they don't want to deal with one more hassle. If I am a CEO of a large organization I will be all over the media asking Women define what Equal work is before they start talking about Equal Pay. And I would look at it case by case If a woman outperforms her peers then As a CEO I would actually pay more period.