Reply to post: If women are REALLY "equal"...

If women are REALLY "equal"...

... then the solution to many of these problems are actually rather straightforward. Remove gender references and judge an applicant on their merits.

In the software field, this might mean taking a resume and stripping out any gender references - including names. Assign a number to the individual. Then have the gender-less applicants take a test that can be comprised of knowledge questions and performance measurements. Score them.

Hire the best qualified based on the results.

What you would likely find is very few women being hired - certainly far fewer than today's protected-class, gender-biased, affirmative-action hiring.

The College Entrance Examination Board ran into this phenomenon in their Physics Level II Achievement Test. Women were woefully underperforming. Afraid that their test was somehow gender-biased in favor of males, the CEEB did an in-depth analysis of the test, question-by-question. It turned out that when a question involved rote application of a stock formula or straight-forward computation, women did slightly better than men. But when the question asked for abstract reasoning or innovative solutions, men far out-paced the women. In the end, the CEEB concluded that they had two options: They could remove the questions requiring abstract reasoning -- OR -- they could test the ability to do physics. It's important to understand that this particular test was one taken only by those who had a personal interest in pursuing a study of physics - that is, the population self-selected for an interest in the subject. While one might expect the average male to be more likely to have an interest in the subject than the average female, this was a group of people where ALL were interested and preparing to enter into the study of physics.

Men and women have different capabilities. Damore's note on the subject is only a minuscule snapshot of a tiny portion of a vast array of studies that support his position - and more. In general, in most technical fields, men far outperform women at every level. Their superiority is akin to the advantage men have in sports where the very best female athletes in the history of the world are on par with male high school athletes and where jobs that require proof of a level of physical fitness (i.e. the armed forces) are compelled to create a lower-level "handicapped soldier" standard for women. That standard is so disparate that a 19-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man are given the same performance rating for a 2-mile run if the male runs the distance nearly a minute FASTER (15:36 versus 14:42). A male 19-year-old must outperform his 19-year-old female counterpart by a full TWO MINUTES AND THIRTY-SIX SECONDS (15:36 versus 13:00) to earn the top score. When it comes to physical activity, the relative weakness of females is tacitly acknowledged by the lower standards. Why does anyone think such differences are restricted to physical differences? Put another way, can anyone produce a peer-reviewed study that argues there are no differences? If so, let us have the evidence so that it may be compared by the mountain of evidence that demonstrates male superiority.