[TriLUG] Discrimination <- Re: The biggest deterrent for women in tech

[Brandon Van Every]

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Ryan Leathers <rleathers at lexile.com> wrote:

> Three cheers for discrimination.
>
> Suppose a candidate I am considering interviews well, but has informed me
> that they will never be able to work on weekends or stay past 5PM.  Is this
> employee just as valuable to me as one who can, everything else being
> equal? Maybe - maybe not. I guess it would depend on the position.
>
>
Cry me a Union.


>
> The point is, even putting all of history aside and starting from a blank
> slate today, IF women as a percentage of workers tend to have more ongoing
> non-work related obligations than men, (and I suspect this is statistically
> the case) then it follows that women will tend to have lower pay.  This
> isn't something a manger will calculate by checking the secret evil gender
> column in a compensation spreadsheet.  It has a hard intersection with
> project management and product deliverables.  Whats more, the way that one
> rewards a good employee might not be reflected entirely by pay. That isn't
> the only thing people care about. Its easy to follow a statistic and
> conclude 'evil discrimination', but that doesn't make it so.
>
>
I imagine studies have been done that calculate wage/hour, not wage/year,
but I don't have that info at my fingertips.  A knockon effect of working
less hours per year is less opportunity to advance one's personal career
and political agenda.  Of course, a lot of people do something about it:
they become self-employed.


Cheers,
Brandon