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by LorenPechtel 1313 days ago
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.

1 comments

> 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?