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by hopler 2664 days ago
Gender gap isn't a problem to solve. It may be a symptom of many things, such as harrassment, discouragement, discrimination, or environmental biases that make women less comfortable than men. Gender gap is smoke, go find fires the need to be put out, and solve those. Otherwise you'll slam into a wall because the "optimal" ratio does not exist and has no consensus, but specific harmful behaviors and and systems are indefensible.
2 comments

I agree with you. It's frustrating when we focus on symptoms instead of the root causes, which are deeply encoded in our culture. It just makes it that much harder.

It's also frustrating when it's not discussed at all. It's hard to bring up the biases and subtle discrimination that occurs as a PoC without making a privileged person run for the hills.

I applaud people whose job is focused on bringing change to organizations. I can't imagine how difficult it is to do this work effectively.

I think you misunderstand the purpose behind those pushing the gender wage gap narrative. Virtually everyone realizes the reality of why the gender wage gap exists and how it's not because of harassment, discouragement, discrimination, or environmental biases. That includes the people who are pushing the narrative. They aren't stupid, they know they are wrong.

Instead they have a different goal. They are collectivists. Their goal is that everyone gets paid exactly the same regardless of what job they do. They want a university professor to be paid the same as an elementary teacher.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304671

I'm not even joking.

Their goal is Marxism/Communism/Socialism. You can't argue with them that a professor should be paid more because of education and skills; because they dont consider those as reasons to be paid more or less.