What I have read is that in the US, women who are childless and without a man earn 98 percent of what men with comparable education and experience make. My stats are probably out of date, so 95 cents on the dollar may be more accurate.
Just suggesting it probably isn't terribly far off, from what I gather, having read up on such a fair amount over the years due to my gender.
Society is constructed too adversarially for my tastes. More collaboration would be better.
How does the group select one solution, without being disagreeable? “Ok we’ll choose that one just because we don’t want to rock the boat” is not an effective way to select. Conflicting thought will always exist, from conflicting observation and experience in the problem space. Those with the better perspective have to push, often hard, to make sure the correct path, which others may not see, is selected.
At some point bad ideas need to be halted. I think this is what “disagreeable” is. How you halt them is another matter, but charisma, manipulation, or favors, which are often the “agreeable” approach, just means you’re steering the path using emotion. I think that’s separate from being “disagreeable”.
And slowly, I think, we are. E.g., the MeToo movement has forced some powerful sociopaths to face at least a small amount of accountability. Rich people at least occasionally go to jail if their crimes are egregious enough.
But it could be faster.
Consistently when people look at aggression the same findings pops up. Men more likely to engage physical aggression, women are more likely to engage low-risk aggression, and women and men show to be equally likely to engage in verbal aggression. Unless Linus goes around and are physical violent with fellow developers then his gender has nothing to do with it.
Take a look at this nice lecture from a professor of biology, neurology and neurological sciences (https://youtu.be/2bnSY4L3V8s?t=30m17s). Recent studies into testosterone levels has shown that it has no relation to initiating aggression in both men and women. What it did find is that different level of testosterone impact how much of an defense behavior is triggered in response to social status threats. An interesting fact is that higher level of testosterone in women actually have a bigger impact compared to men, but men on average showed a larger response.
That might sound like aggression but here is the deal. If you create a social structure which rewards cooperation and social status is maintained through non-aggressive behavior then testosterone is correlated to lower aggression. That mean that it should tell you a lot about the community or company if testosterone correlate to aggression.
I think it's worth noting the inverse. That less aggressive men will become more competitive and aggressive over time in all male groups.
There's also the change that this is not the solution as certain positions do require some form of aggression unless you're willing to persuade the other companies in different countries from the one you propose the change in to do the same. Otherwise it may prove to be a disadvantage even to have a more "argeeable" person in such a position.
I would love for the solution to be as simple "get more women into power" but as it currently stands from my perspective, we have deeper issues to deal with where it doesn't matter if it's a woman or a man. I'm open to be proven wrong though.