[didibus]

I'm not saying the employer is discriminating. Read my other reply to you, I think it clarifies better what I'm saying.

My argument is that, there's a great possibility that gender inequality persists today, and that it contributes to the gender gap. Not that I'm convinced it does for sure, but that it's still highly likely it does, based on research data and other reasonable hypothesis.

Therefore, some companies are trying to combat this possible inequality, by choosing to prioritize a similarly qualified women candidate over a qualified men, in order to limit the effect of possible hiring bias, and promote women representation in tech, in hope to make their workplace more women friendly.

If there is in fact lingering gender inequality, this should help combat it, and it's arguably a good thing (we can separately discuss if in practice it works to combat it or not, but at least it's understandable why they'd do it).

If it turns out there isn't any lingering gender inequality against women, I agree that this would appear to put a bias against men now, creating an inequality against them.

This is where it gets a little tricky, because now it's about your belief of the true cause. I see some men worried about their own career chances often believe that probably there isn't inequality and it's just personal choice. But I also don't understand why you'd worry about it in that case, if women just don't want to become programmers, no amount of policy encouragement would change that, and you've got nothing to worry about.

I also personally feel the evidence for lingering gender inequality appears stronger, and I think you can learn valuable insight by trying some corrective policies and also seeing the outcome. The more policies fail to reduce the gender gap, the more you learn the factors that have or don't have an impact on it, eventually that could lead us to know the real cause.

[LorenPechtel]

Sure there are differences. However, you aren't showing that companies are discriminating to cause that difference. Companies shouldn't bear the burden of righting wrongs that they didn't cause, especially in cases where it's not at all certain there is even a wrong going on.

What you are missing is that if women just don't want to become programmers the drive to not discriminate means companies will be overpaying for female programmers.

And we have seen that policies aimed at reducing discrimination had a big effect in the civil rights era but then accomplish virtually nothing since. Instead, we see wilder and wilder efforts to "prove" discrimination while ignoring the marketplace is saying it's the other way around.

[didibus]

> However, you aren't showing that companies are discriminating to cause that difference

Correct, I'm also making no claims that they are. The discrimination, if there is any, appears to come from socio-cultural causes.

> What you are missing is that if women just don't want to become programmers the drive to not discriminate means companies will be overpaying for female programmers

I'm not following that, can you explain? I'd assume they offer similar pay to man and woman, as far as I know, there's no evidence they're paying woman more, in fact, seems to be the opposite.

> And we have seen that policies aimed at reducing discrimination had a big effect in the civil rights era but then accomplish virtually nothing since

Ya, I'm not sure that you can solve the problem at that level either.

In practice, I think women hiring pushes like this has actually caused some men to be even more hostile to women workers, and that's actually having the opposite effect, work environments are even less welcoming to women, and their credibility is being questioned even more, as people claim they were hired to meet quotas, etc.

It's hard to change socio-cultural attitudes. And it only takes a few derogatory men to make the field toxic to women.

The issue is, what else can you do?