A former marketing vice president for Silicon Valley company Carta is suing the company for wrongful termination, retaliation, gender discrimination, and violations of the California Equal Pay Act. According to her lawsuit, she was subjected to unequal pay on the basis of her gender.
The VP says the problem came to her attention six months after she took her new position at Carta. The company had partnered with another company to produce a report that looked at Carta’s equity ownership and its relation to gender.
The marketing VP, the only woman executive who worked for the company at the time, learned from the report that she earned $50,000 less than her male peers. The report also revealed that women working for the companies that were part of the report received less equity in the companies that employed them. In her case, she says her original equity grant was one-third of what comparable male executives received.
Carta responded with a $50,000 raise for the woman and tripled the stock options made available to her. However, the company balked at backdating the improvements to her compensation package for the six months she had already worked for Carta.
Carta was valued at about $500 million when she joined the company. An investor valuation of the company following the dispute assigned a $3 billion value to Carta. The woman feels it is unfair for her not to receive fair compensation for her contribution to the growth of the company.
The California Equal Pay Act offers protections against unfair wages and salaries. To learn more about wage and hour violations in California — and the action you can take to put a stop to violations — please see our wage and hour overview.