A civil rights attorney is researching a possibility of a gender bias lawsuit against Google - on top of one already being pursued by the US Labor Department, and against the background of turmoil caused by a male engineer's ill-conceived memo railing against women in tech.

Attorney James Finberg says more than 60 women who are current and former employees of Google are considering the class-action lawsuit claiming they earned less than men despite equal qualifications and comparable positions.  "They are concerned that women are channeled to levels and positions that pay less than men with similar education and experience," Finberg told The Guardian newspaper.

Among them is a former senior manager who says that not only was she paid tens of thousands of dollars per year less than male supervisors, but even a male employee she supervised got a higher salary.  "It's demoralizing," said the former manager who chose to remain anonymous, "There's something subconsciously that happens where you do start to question the value that you're adding to the company."

A former Google human experience designer said, "I felt like I wasn't playing the game in the 'boys club' environment."  She said she regularly dealt with sexist remarks about her looks and was denied a promotion despite her achievements and large workload.  "I was watching male coworkers progress at a faster rate than myself," she said, "It was really disturbing."

Earlier this year, the US Department of Labor sued Google for allegedly systematically paying women less than men in comparable positions.  Google strongly denied the accusations.

The company is reeling from the memo written by a male software engineer who claimed that men should occupy more leadership roles than women in tech because of "biological differences".  James Damore also accused Google of being intolerant towards so-called conservative views.  Google fired him for violating the company code of conduct, and for "advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace".