Brad Hudson wrote: Where in the world did I say "men suck at equality" or assign fault? I've been answering your questions and telling you how I see things. I don't think it's a matter of fault at all. But I do think that to say we could end abuse, bring about the unequal treatment of women, change imbalances in society, and bringing about equal access to achievement based on ability while turning a blind eye on the structure of the society in which we find ourselves is an exercise in self-deception.
Let me take a step back and say I probably went too far in using the line from xkcd as a one-for-one equivalency.
My personal experience with trying to right things with laws is mixed. A positive example I've seen is in the
State of New Mexico where pay equity has to be demonstrated in order to win State contracts. My firm has done some work in New Mexico, the process seems to be reasonable and it's focused on fairness within the pay structure of a company.
On the other hand, tying federal funding for projects to having a certain percentage of the work completed by women/minority owned businesses has led to a stratification in the discipline I'm in. Large firms tend to fall into two categories: those that are WBE's or those that exist as departments within larger generally male-owned engineering or architectural firms. This result is the product of a few decades of the male-owned engineering firms hiring W/MBE's to fulfill the W/MBE percentage obligation while not doing anything to correct inequality within the actual companies. Because federal funding is often tied to the larger, high visibility projects covering all transportation work in our state as well as many public works and high-profile building/campus projects, narrowing the field to W/MBE firms has had unintended consequences. The ability of a firm to grow is tied to it's ability to get part of that work in most cases.
But this hasn't fixed gender discrimination or sexual intimidation problems in the industry. It tends to cause resentment on the part of some male company owners and professionals. In segments of the industry where federal funding isn't involved such as private development, sexism is a very real problem. A few of my women co-workers have told me horror stories about working in offices where frat house behavior is the norm and their sense it was a truly hostile work environment led them to quit and eventual come work with our firm. So we have small, frat house offices operating on good-ol'-boy principles where the money comes from private pockets, and disincentives that create resentment and have similar effects on disadvantaging men in certain market niches instead of reducing inequality. My wife also works in the same industry, and if we were to start our own business it would be financial suicide to not set it up in her name as the primary owner. The whole thing is a mess in many ways.
My view is the issues are real enough, but solutions need to be targeted at specific sources. Individuals and organizations as I said.
