Jessica Guynn

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is celebrating "Lady Day."

Some 800 Google employees in more than 20 countries are raising awareness about gender inequality after an Alphabet shareholder's sexist remark.

At last week's annual meeting, an investor addressed a question to "the lady CFO," meaning the Google parent's finance chief Ruth Porat, one of Wall Street's most powerful and influential executives whose leadership has restored confidence in Alphabet investors.

Ten minutes later Sonen Capital's Danielle Ginach stepped to the microphone to call him out. "I am sorry to put another shareholder on the spot," she said. "But Ms. Porat is the CFO, not the lady CFO.

The idea for "Lady Day" popped up in an email group for Google alumni of leadership development program Stretch. One person suggested a tongue-in-cheek protest, that for two days — Thursday and Friday — in the company directory and in email signatures employees change his or her title to Lady (fill in the blank) as in Lady Software Engineer Lady or Lady Systems Engineer. Word quickly spread with a logo and internal landing page.

The tag line of the protest? "Actually...it's just CFO."

"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," said Meg Mason, Lady Partner Operations Manager, Shopping.

Bob Jung, Lady Director, Software Engineering, emailed his team to encourage them to change titles.

"It's really inspiring to have women leaders like Ruth to look up to and I hope that by seeing this, women will continue to push themselves," said Anya Estrov, Lady Senior Business Lead.

Alphabet shareholder calls Ruth Porat 'lady CFO'

The struggle for gender equality is real in the tech industry. Two years ago, Google kicked off a more open dialogue about that lack of diversity by publishing a report that revealed the lopsided gender demographics of its work force. Seven out of 10 Google employees are men.

Google has been digging into its mountains of cash and tapping some of the world's smartest minds to crack the code on attracting and retaining more women and underrepresented minorities. And it has a number of high-profile women in key posts aside from Porat such as the leaders of its two biggest initiatives: video-sharing service YouTube and its enterprise cloud business.

"I was in disbelief when he (the shareholder) said it," Ginach told USA TODAY last week. "When it was my turn to speak, there was no way I was not going to acknowledge it. She has been a tremendous leader for Google, but her leadership aside, that was an unbelievably sexist comment. Imagine addressing the 'man CFO.' What is the relationship between gender and CFO?"