[solidsnack9000]

> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal.

In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.

[weberc2]

I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).

[solidsnack9000]

The difference between our points of view seems to be the degree to which we regards Uber as an outlier. I don't; it's one of many companies with this very different "fairness"; so I don't think we can take the market at face value.

[weberc2]

Perhaps. I'd love more data on the subject. The data closest data I'm familiar with pertain to fair compensation between genders (not necessarily sexual harassment); and these data suggest that all but 4% of the wage cap can be explained by differing priorities between the gender (women prefer safer work with more flexibility rather than a high salary); the other 4% could be attributable to discrimination, misogynistic conditions, or other choice-related variables for which the studies didn't control. If so many companies were as bad as this article describes, I would expect that 4% number to be much larger (there are other explanations, but they don't seem very plausible to me). At any rate, we probably need better data (or maybe the data exist, but I'm not aware of them?).

[solidsnack9000]

Flexibility in job position is a matter of industry -- since one can not take a skill everywhere -- so looking at data that is across all industries won't speak to how fair (or not) the market is with regards to a particular role/salary/conditions combo.