Microsoft board to look at gender pay gap, male culture

Numbers from job site Glassdoor show that men tend to earn more doing a similar job than women at Microsoft, though the data is far from complete and based on voluntary disclosure.

a. equal hours worked != equal work. Have the men been employed longer, been with the company longer, or are they more productive? Merit should help dictate pay, not merely how many hours you clock in.

b. The pay gap myth is a myth. Even such bastions of right-wing misogny such as the HUFFINGTON POST have posted articles debunking it.

c. Even if the pay gap did exist, capitalism would quickly eradicate it. Are we really to believe that the same corporate overlords that shipped millions of jobs to Chinese factory workers making pennies an hour would abstain from hiring women (if they truly were paid less) due to some patriarchal tendency?

d. I don't see women demanding equal representation in mining, oil drilling, or logging. Nor do I see them demanding equal representation for men in traditionally female-dominated industries. Truth is, they're only going after the tech industry because it's comfortable and high-paying.

M-curve applies way more to women than it does to men, but (not in Japan but in USA) it's a choice women make, to take time off for families.

As far as 'back in the day there were only two women' goes for Microsoft, in 1999 "one-twentieth of those over age 49" were engineers, according to wikipedia, below. 1978 was 21 years prior to 1999, so the number in 1978 is not going to be much greater than "one-twentieth of those over age 28" were engineers.

Tech careers are something people embark on and grow for themselves. There's very minimal contact / support / encouragement from mentors, for anybody. It's easy to get knocked off course and never come back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering_in_the_United_States

... According to the National Society of Professional Engineers in 2004, there were approximately 192,900 female engineers throughout the country, compared with over 1,515,000 men.[10] Of these women, approximately 1/3 of them were software engineers (62,900). Women were also employed in higher rates than men in environmental engineering (9% to 4%) and chemical engineering (7% to 4%). However, they were less likely than men to be employed in mechanical engineering (8% to 17%) and electrical engineering (12% to 18%).[10]

In 1999, women made up approximately one quarter of all engineers under the age of 25, whereas they constituted one-twentieth of those over age 49. This age discrepancy has been attributed to women's notable, but recent, movement into engineering within the past few decades.[10] According to the Society of Women Engineers, women and other minorities constituted approximately 16%-17% of engineering graduate students from 1990-2003. Furthermore, in 2003 approximately 20% (approximately 12,000)of new engineers were women, compared with about 80% of men (approximately 49,000).[11] ...

You guys have nailed it!

Board of directors vote the Indian CEO out. His Indian mentality has no place in the US company ... Why you pick him up as CEO ?????