In the end, I think it's almost impossible to say anything meaningful about individual cases. Fact is that in a lot of companies salary varies, sometimes quite

In the end, I think it's almost impossible to say anything meaningful about individual cases. Fact is that in a lot of companies salary varies, sometimes quite wildly, based on all sorts of factors: how well you negotiated, how badly the position was needed at the time of hiring, the mood of the hiring manager that day, how much of the budget was used that year, how well the company is doing at the time of hiring, stellar alignment, etc. It's very hard to say which factor played a part. This is true for most roles and not limited to the executive level. The law states that (from the judge's opinion): "Rowe must demonstrate that Google failed to pay her equally to a man in the same geographic area for (a) equal work on a job the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility, and which is performed under similar working conditions, or (b) substantially similar work, when viewed as a composite of skill, effort, and responsibility, and performed under similar working conditions.", but this is kind of an unreasonable standard to really prove gender discrimination IMHO. So any male getting paid more than any female can only be explained by discrimination? In some cases it's probably a factor. In others: probably not? Hard to distinguish the two however. All we can really do is statistics over a large group, and then say something about that group. But that says nothing about individuals. There are short Dutch people, tall Indonesians, and Germans with a sense of humour.