Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has landed himself in hot water for comments about women in his workforce before.
Microsoft says there is essentially no gap between the wages it pays men and women employed in the same roles. Women who work for the software company in the US make 99.8 cents for every dollar made by men with the same job title.
Microsoft is the latest technology giant to release data on employee compensation amid pressure from shareholders.
"These numbers reflect our commitment to equal pay for equal work, and I'm encouraged by these results," Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's head of human resources, said in a blog post announcing the figures on Monday.
Microsoft disclosed the data after investment firm Arjuna Capital submitted a proposal that, if approved by company shareholders, would have asked Microsoft to commit to closing the gender pay gap. The investment firm withdrew its proposal after Microsoft released the data.
Arjuna has been pressuring the technology industry to disclose its pay practices for men and women and commit to ending any disparities along gender lines.
Amazon.com, after losing its challenge to an Arjuna proposal it raised with regulators, disclosed its own data, which also showed virtually no gender gap, last month.
Microsoft has been in the spotlight on the debate about how the technology industry treats women in its ranks since Chief Executive Satya Nadella said women should trust that the system would reward them fairly, rather than ask for raises. He quickly said those comments were incorrect.
The company has since reported a decline in the percentage of women it employs, to 26.8 percent, as layoffs hit phone hardware units that skewed more heavily female than Microsoft's workforce as a whole. Microsoft employs about 61,000 people in the U.S., nearly 43,000 of them in offices in the Seattle area and elsewhere in Washington state. The company declined to provide the breakdown of the gender pay gap, if any, among its 51,000 employees outside the U.S.
Microsoft also said on Monday that racial and ethnic minorities were compensated equally, dollar for dollar, as their white counterparts with the same job titles the U.S.
The Seattle Times
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