Add to that that Lesbians make more than straight women[1] - and gay men less than straight men [2][3] - and there is a bit more at play.
The problem is that any time there is something men do better than women - like negotiate pay - rather than bring women up to the male standard (teach women to negotiate better), people want to hamstring men (no pay negotiation). Anti-worker policies and pro-gender policies are often indistinguishable, if only to me personally, and in my more cynical moments think this is a business conspiracy to deflate wages to female levels, not increase wages to male levels.
[1] http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/what-explains-the-lesbia...
[2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2009....
If you disclose what everyone earns at every level, it's easy to then let all your employees pull everyone hold themselves accountable to the same level.
A bit like crabs in a bucket...
If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/04...
Or it would indicate a successful outreach program at Google for women by which they were successful at getting qualified women not currently working in tech to apply; this doesn't necessarily imply a like-duties gender pay gap.
It's also a bit of a weasely statement - to quote Penn & Teller, they are lying with numbers - since it doesn't mention the current difference in wages.
Leaving early to pick up kids, staying home when kids are sick, etc. Even though typical gender roles are becoming less typical, they may still result in differential output from the perspective of an employer.
Thomas Sowell (a while ago) showed a dramatic difference in salary between all women, and women who had never married, suggesting that a huge component of the pay gap was due to household and family expectations.
I imagine there is more recent research on this exact theory, but I'm not aware of it.
Though I agree with your secondary assertion.
And we should probably let go of the idea that markets are rational.
Because that's blatantly, bright-line illegal?
Plenty of places have no problem hiring (almost) only women, e.g. kindergarden, waitresses, art galleries, medical sociologists, stewardesses.
In any case I doubt this would be illegal in every legislation. In the US men are not a "protected group".
Where there is a will there is a (legal) way! I imagine that a company could legally load up with women to the max, compensate with differential hiring: e.g. only hiring female programmers, compensate with lower paid male drivers/cleaners. Or use outsourcing.
I'm sure if Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai etc really belived that women are underpaid vis-a-vis their contribution, they could easily make it happen. Indeed, they are now so powerful they could get their army of lobbyists to change the law.
Action speaks louder than words.
Yes, there's plenty of kinds of jobs men don't apply for at nearly the rate women do. That's certainly not the case for programming jobs.
> In any case I doubnt this would be illegal in every legislation. In the US men are not a "protected group"
This is simply factually incorrect; in employment, sex—not just one sex—is a protected class, federally [0] and separately under most state laws, as well. About the only assymetric protected class in employment is age, where discrimination is only protected against when it is against those over 40.
There's plenty of kinds of jobs Women don't apply for at nearly the rate men do.
Yes, but that's not germane to the discussion.
...also not germane to the present discussion, though it perhaps is relevant to some post far uphtread or off to the side somewhere.
A company adopting a policy of hiring only women for technical positions is a bright line violation of federal (and, in California, also state) employment law. The fact a number of industries that aren't tech are nearly exclusively female (largely because of applicant patterns) does not change this. The fact that some industries are male dominated, in part for similar reasons, really has nothing at all do with this one way or the other. The nature of feminist argument patterns is even more completely irrelevant.
With a policy of hiring only women, or with being a field of mostly female solo operators without employees, with nearly 100% of applicants for places that do hire employees being female?
Because the two things aren't equivalent in the law.
I would imagine after rejection after rejection men would find something else (insurance was my friends out). It still amazes me how many industries insurance companies seem to influence the hiring in.
Maybe you shouldn't rely on a thought-experiment when you can do data: Adjusted paygaps consistenly range between 4-7%.
Say, the SJW publication Fortune:
http://fortune.com/2016/04/12/myth-gender-wage-gap/
Or the left-wing washington post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-...
Isn't that the question to be answered in order to really understand what's going on?
Otherwise I bet I can always find, for any company, a subset of people that are underpaid relative to the rest, be it related to age, gender, race, sexual preferences, employment history, ZIP code, whatever.