You really have to ask yourself: Why would women, as a cohort, make the same amount per individual as men? Do you assume that nothing can be different enough be

You really have to ask yourself: Why would women, as a cohort, make the same amount per individual as men? Do you assume that nothing can be different enough between men and women to reasonably justify the statistics? I know of women who are paid more than me in tech, and I know why. I know of women who are paid less than me, and I can think of n reasons why. As for sheer numbers, ask yourself: are there any industries where there are considerably fewer men than women? The answer is, of course, yes. Look at nursing. In the most gender-equitable societies on the planet, I'm talking the Norways and Swedens of the world, you'll see 80-90% female involvement in nursing. Look at construction. In those same societies, you will see almost the exact opposite, probably even greater disparities. Look at sales departments, I don't know a single woman who likes sales work, and I know at least a few who have given it a serious try. I'm sure there are some, but you won't convince me that it's the norm without hard data. On the flip side of that, I grew up with guys who love working with their hands in construction, and who like that it's honest work. My intuition is that men and women(real, living individual men and women) are different in some way which drives them to prefer different work based on schedules, the way their job has them interact with people, the amount of solitary vs. collaborative work, work-life balance, and hosts of other complex differences. As for harassment, I find it hard to believe that tech is a particularly bad place for it. I would believe you if you said that startups are prone to harassment (HR vacuum). Until I see a non-partisan study with an appreciable number of respondents, a consistent rubric for assessing individual situations, I will continue to believe what I see in person. No CNET or USA Today article is going to convince me that it's a problem in itself that there is a statistical difference between the average yearly earnings of different cohorts. I'm sure married and unmarried people make different amounts of money on average. I'm sure people with and without kids make different amounts of money on average. Nothing about those statistics says that there is a discriminatory or unfair advantage. If you could prove that a major company is systematically underpaying women for work of equivalent holistic value, then it would be the case of the decade; this case has clearly never happened, because if it ever did, it would be an outrage, and at very least the people making this argument would be pointing at it every time they got a chance. And I know you'll downvote this before reading it through, but maybe the first few open-minded people will get a chance to reflect. I can spare a few HN hivemind cohesion points.