>Big tech firms are desperate for more women.

I can't talk about everyone's experience, but this is true in a "We desperately want to have more women", but not true in the sense of "We're willing to address the systematic reasons women don't join our company". It doesn't matter how much you advertise on a website for women if you're advertising a job with no maternity benefits, or one of your engineers remarks "Oh! Is this our new HR lady?" when you're showing the prospective employee around the office.

How many companies in the US have paid paternity leave?

How many firms don't offer maternity leave? Outside of tiny 5 person startups that don't have any HR policies at all that seems like a strawman.

As for men making condescending comments towards women, that's not a systematic problem with a systematic solution. And women (or really, feminists) pretty routinely make condescending comments towards men in my experience, at a much, much greater rate. The idea that women face a hostile work environment and men don't is the inversion of my own experience. Men face a much more hostile environment. The last thing the software industry needs is ramping up the hostility towards men even more because that's the only way feminists can think of to increase the number of female hires.

I think what the warring feminist faction doesn't understand (or does and ignores) is that their actions are breeding fear and resentment towards women. There's a spectrum here, On the consequence-less wrong end you have assholes getting away with sexist comments toward their women colleagues[0]. In the desirable middle, you have everyone treating everyone else with proper professional respect. But on the other bad end, you have every male in the office becoming tense and extremely self-conscious in presence of their women co-workers, because of the perceived risk that they may be dealing with someone that gets easily offended about random things and is ready to create a stink with HR for it[1].

Now, I see the feminist movement in our industry definitely overshooting towards that other bad end, and it doesn't really matter that most women are reasonable - the mere possibility of chancing into someone unreasonable drives overly cautious behavior. There is such a thing as pushing too hard. Stirring a conflict of sexes may have been the fastest way to enact change, but the antagonistic atmosphere isn't going to just dissipate itself.

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[0] - I mean the cases that make women uncomfortable; I've worked with women whose sexual innuendos during regular office chats made me uncomfortable.

[1] - Or, worst case, someone who does that on purpose, to advance their career at the expense of others. There's always a fraction of people of both genders ready to play dirty, but in current environment one of them is now armed with a superweapon.

I wonder how widespread this really is, though. Before I retired I worked in IT, an my particular team was about 50-50 men and women. I certainly didn't feel anything like

> every male in the office becoming tense and extremely self-conscious in presence of their women co-workers, because of the perceived risk that they may be dealing with someone that gets easily offended about random things and is ready to create a stink with HR

The largest employer in the United States does not offer paid maternity leave — the U.S. Government. My wife whom is a federal employee did not receive maternity leave. Instead she was forced to use two years of forwarded sick leave.

Why isn't it a law like everywhere else in the world. In Canada men and women get maternity leave at the country level. Why put this in the hands of employers? or on the backs of a 5 person company?

Seems like things are setup to fail.

I didn't know that! Thanks. I wonder why that's the case. Is that normal in the States?

It blew my mind too. No it isn't normal at all in the states which is why I found it so unbelievable until I researched it. All of my commercial employers offered paid maternity and paternity leave. There are movements now for passing legislation to get federal employees paid maternity leave but nothing has come of it yet from what I understand.