AnIdiot

> Which is a noble sentiment but simply doesn't happen in the business world (or in many other places).

On the contrary, all the evidence I've seen points to discrimination being a very small part of the gender pay gap.

The problem is that men and women are different.[1] So it becomes very difficult to even measure if women are being discriminated against much or are just different to men.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep...

I didn't do that. Merit is meant broadly to encompass many things.

That's true. But consider that in some majors such as software engineering there are 5 times as many men as women. If you try to hire women, your pool will be so much smaller you'll almost certainly choose worse candidates.

Of course that assumes you can select the best candidate from a pool. Feminists argue that there is bias that prevents this. However studies on the gender pay gap reveal that there's very little bias and most differences can be explained by education, experience, job choice, hours worked, etc. More recently psychological differences between men and women have been shown to contribute to the pay gap.[1]

My opinion is that affirmative action is naive and that society is better off to strengthen meritocratic hiring. Removing names from CVs may help women slightly but there's no reason to believe that men and women would achieve the same outcomes given equal opportunity.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep...