In their request for class-action status, the women suing Google said that the company paid female employees approximately $16,800 less per year than “the similarly-situated man,” citing an analysis by David Neumark, an economist at UC Irvine. “Google paid women less base salary, smaller bonuses, and less stock than men in the same job code and location,” they said.

“Hearing the stories from numerous other women has helped me understand how my incident, though unique in its details, is part of a larger narrative,” Huang said. “It’s basically impossible for any individual to know with 100 percent certainty that her promotion was denied due to gender. The only way to understand the systemic bias is for all of us to share our experience so we can look at what’s happening on the whole."