Google is typically thought of as being a fairly activist corporation, and a new campaign amongst over 800 of its employees is doing nothing to dispel that notion.
In response to an investor who called CFO Ruth Porat the tech giant’s “lady CFO” during an Alphabet shareholder meeting earlier this month, many Google employees decided to add the word “lady” in front of their title for Thursday and Friday of this week.
The symbolic gesture was suggested by an individual within a company email group, and the idea rapidly picked up steam. An internal company site was created to support the protest measure.
It should be mentioned that both men and women at Google participated in adopting the prefix “lady”, which was both added to their email signatures and to their names within Google’s internal company directory.
Meg Mason, Google’s partner operations manager for shopping, told USA Today, “I wanted to do something fun and ‘Googley’ that allowed us all to stand together, and to show that someone’s gender is entirely irrelevant to how they do their job.”
The movement also inspired emojis and a Google-inspired GIF that highlights the many roles that women play in society.
Despite Google’s reputation as being progressive, it turns out that only 30 percent of Google employees are female. Tech is still a male-dominated industry, despite it becoming more accessible for females.
Google, for its part, has invested in making sure it attracts the top female and minority candidates for its open positions.
