My main point is that sometimes discrimination is not economically irrational. If that's true, but we as a society think that these forms of discrimination are still bad, we need to come up with better, stronger solutions to make sure discrimination of this sort doesn't happen.

The "rationality" you are talking about is false rationality. It's rationalisation- an excuse that people tell themselves to justify their inability to give up on the prejudice they've been taught.

This is true in a strictly material sense but it may not be true from a social/cultural/identity perspective. Traditional masculine identity at its very core is about being the root of the tree: the one your family depends on. Today, fewer and fewer men are in that situation. There are countless articles out there about men's withdrawal from the workforce. More and more women are getting college degrees and the gap over men is growing. Women with a college degree rarely date, let alone marry, men without a degree.

I'll be the first to say I don't automatically want life to go back to the way it was in the 50's. I just can't claim that everybody benefits equally from the new world order. Honestly, I don't know what we as a society ought to do about men who have checked out because they feel that life has left them behind.

I have no idea to what extent that's true, but let's say it's 100% correct.

The obvious thing to do is to make sure as many men as women have degrees. Ideally, that would mean _all_ men (and therefore, all women).

Of course, we could equalise the numbers by making it so fewer women get degrees but that's retrograde and unproductive. Although it does seem to me that sometimes, that's what people are asking for, when they say "more and more women get degrees these days" like it was a bad thing.

>> Honestly, I don't know what we as a society ought to do about men who have checked out because they feel that life has left them behind.

Make sure they get an education every bit as good as that available to men from more privileged backgrounds and create the environment and the opportunities for them to have a fulfilling and rewarding working life.

There are still quite a few very important jobs out there which do not​ need a degree (such as the trades). There are also lots of men who don't want to spend the time or the money on a degree, especially if they can get one of these jobs.

For various reasons, women aren't going for these jobs much at all. Women, moreso than men, seem to operate on the basis that a degree is the only path to a successful life.

Overall, it just seems like large numbers of women and men have inadvertently decided to go their separate ways. I don't know what the end result of this will be, but it sure seems lonely to me.

The fact that there was such a large, significant difference between high status men and low status men, but on the other hand low status women had 5 times the callbacks of low status men, strongly suggests you are incorrect.

There is a lot of handwaving here.

>Women benefit, because duh,

Certainly on one specific variable it's an improvement, but is it a benefit, all things considered? One of the things I find interesting about this is: I don't want to work at a white shoe law firm! I have no desire for 90-hr weeks, suffering culture, etc. And in general, women don't either. Can you blame them?

"But I'm not talking about forcing them, just offering them the choice. They don't have to take it." Absolutely true, and in general they've decided: hell no. "But that's because of discrimination..." which occurs because of that choice. How do you impose economic equality and freedom of choice if people make different choices?

White shoe law firms aren't happy with this: they'd keep employees locked in forever if they could. Maybe they have some horrible nightmare good reason for this that makes it work for them, I'm not a white shoe law firm. But the way they function apparently requires high-class workaholics. As long as that that's true, you will find difference ("equity" is a retarded and reductive concept. Men and women will only ever be equal if you see them as income numbers rather than men and women. I weigh 165 pounds. Am I equal with a 165-lb weight? How about a 165-lb version of me that doesn't know how to program and went into sales instead?).

>men benefit because their female relatives don't depend on them,

Imagine a world where no one depends on Google. Does Google benefit? This obviously has some troubling connotations and it's a more complex situation, but that's exactly my point. You're handwaving like this is elementary arithmetic ("Does the number on one income statement match the other?"), and oh it's so obvious what the real rationality is, how do these sexists talk themselves into these contrived beliefs, when you're dealing with complex phenomena.

Not all is well at prestigious law firms. Not all is well in the tech sector. But they will only get worse if you add reductionist thinking to the mix.

The OP was arguing that women have a lower expected work output over their career at a company, which is why "economically rational" was used.

So the employers would technically be better off hiring a male over a female with the same skills.

I was disagreeing with that on the basis that only looking at your bottom line when trying to decide what is "economically rational" is short-termist and self-defeating, because everyone benefits from living in a society where women have the opportunity to be as productive as men- and that includes employers who don't have to look at the gender of candidates to make a decision.

The benefits may be harder to measure, but that's why rationality is required, rather than rationalisation of unjustifiable bias ("women have lower expected work output").

The genuinely rational thing to do is to try and ensure that both women and men are equally productive, as workers.

If you want law firms to make their hiring decisions differently, then you have to change the incentives and rules that apply to them, not make false claims that they're being irrational.

Being a churn-and-burn testosterone fest is starting to look like it might have some negative long term consequences.

We're finally deciding as a society that this sort of discrimination is bad, so we need to provide an economic incentive to make it a rational choice for the company to equally weigh a man and woman.

Additionally, businesses get money from the state to pay the wages of their employers on maternity leave, and I think (hope) they do the same for fathers.

I believe other European countries also have similar arrangements in place.