[lurr]

Equally qualified is generally taken to mean they have comparable skills accross a broad spectrum of criteria. Maybe Al knows a bit more about vue.js but Marcy knows react. If I'm doing a project in Vue and I give Al more to do that's fine.

But say I'm doing a project in Java and they are about equal, I keep giving Al the meaty work then use it justify a promotion, which I can't justify for Marcy. It's not that she's that much worse, I just never gave her the chance to prove it (blah blah peter principle, perform at next level, etc...). That just might be a bit sexist.

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Comparable skills is not the same as equally skilled. You provide an example of sexism but that's not what happens in the real world - In that scenario, Al is pissed because he has to do all the work when he knows full well Marcy can do half of it. He offloads it to the bored Marcy and tells his manager during standup.

[lurr]

Delegation, sign he deserves a promotion.

Have you really never worked on a project where the golden boy was the face of everything and everyone else was ignored?

[hi-im-mi-ih]

Yes, I've been in this type of situation for 9 months. My reaction to it is that, yes, the golden boy is much better than me and he knows what he's doing. I respect his competence.