No one has to "attempt to divide the genders." Women have already been subjected to this in colonial and imperial countries for at least thousands of years.

What you see as an "attempt at dividing" is more accurately the article showing you reality while you dismiss it.

Yea, reading this comment just a week after Susan Fowler's post on her experiences at Uber is surreal.

It's not the ones complaining about this stuff who are "dividing the genders".

People who claim that 'women earn 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men' - when studies overwhelmingly show that this is false when taking into consideration roles and hour etc. - are definitely 'dividing genders'.

Pay equity debates require nuance. Most of those promoting the issue seem to fail to grasp that.

That there are some sexist pigs in the world (ie. some guy at Uber), does not make the world full of sexist pigs. It doesn't necessarily even make Uber full of them, although it's more plausible.

Almost all politicians involved in the issue are divisive, because that's what gets them attention, and riles up the base.

Watch some of the 'not popular' politicians do interviews on the news. They are refreshingly reasonable. On all sides.

> "People who claim that 'women earn 77 cents on the dollar as compared to men' - when studies overwhelmingly show that this is false when taking into consideration roles and hour etc. - are definitely 'dividing genders'."

Women didn't start anything here in terms of division by gender. Did you think JFK signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963 for fun or something?

If there is overstepping, consider that they may just be trying to correct the overstepping of the other side. It's one of those things you can only appreciate by having your own skin in the game.

JFK did not sign a law stating that across all America, pay averages for women and men must be the same.

He signed a law stating that a 'female plumber should be paid the same as a male plumber of equal qualifications'.

Broadly - this is the case. There is essentially pay equality in America.

Men and women do different jobs, and have different lifestyles, which constitutes the differential in pay.

The inability to understand this, and to project misleading data is definitely divisive.

If you said: "very few women have Eng jobs because so few of them get Eng degrees - let's start a program to encourage girls to get in to Engineering" - then this would not be divisive.

But if you said: "Women should have 50% of the Eng. jobs even though they only make up 13% of the talent pool" - then this is extremely divisive.

Recognizing the specific contributions and presence of women in the field seems entirely reasonable given how throughout the history of our industry they have been erased.

And of course, we're not even a month of a self-implosion event at Uber, where we see a lot of corroboration of workplace harassment claims.

If you need to be told "not all men" you can maybe write a chrome extension so that it subs "men" to "men (but of course it should be clear from context: not every single man ever or currently)" and that'll cover you.

> paint men in a derogatory light

I'm not sure I see what you're referring to. I don't think the article mentions men at all, apart from the senators?

Equality scares people when inequality is all they have to lean on. It makes them do strange things to re-frame discussions.

Let's be the change we want to see in the world and avoid assuming other people's experiences, no matter what side they're on :|

How do you know they didn't do as good of work? You and I both know that objectively judging "quality of work" in this industry is extremely difficult, and more often it just comes down to someone's biased opinion.

I would really appreciate it if you could back this assertion up with some detail.

I read the post, but your comments still make little sense to me. The only interpretations I can think of paint you in a pretty negative light and that would be clearly unfair on my part.

FWIW, gender equality is a serious issue in all fields (including software development) in this country and I feel it is both important and worthwhile to keep this top-of-mind. International Women's Day and this page are both working toward that goal... This surely is just as relevant to the site as the "Decline in Sexual Frequency Among American Adults" article.[0]

[0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-017-0953-...

PSA: at this point, making comments complaining about "virtue signalling" is virtue signalling. And I suggest investing in new talking points -- "this is just as (insert -ism) as what they're fighting against" has been retired.

So if A are fighting against B on behalf of C, but are doing B to D, we're supposed to just keep silent because you say that "talking point" has been "retired"?

I don't think so...

I suspect the claim is that the talking point is retired because it's false.