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Comment by ralusek | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that the situation you just described is a fiction. Most engineering divisions hire on talent, irrespective of gender, so the talented woman would have been hired over the mediocre man by the system which pays no attention to gender at all.

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I have no way of even beginning to address a comment that claims that we hire on talent. That's just false. Regardless of where you are on the 'women in tech are victims of sexism' dimension, you can't seriously claim that engineering divisions hire on talent. Engineering divisions can't even reliably discern talent.

Perhaps so. But perhaps the talented woman also experienced a hostile or otherwise undesirable work environment and leaves after a short period of time. Or leaves the industry altogether.

A Baby Bell utilities company lost a court case in the 60s which requires them to hire women in the field. Their argument was that women can't handle the heavy tools. After losing they purchased aluminum ladders to replace the heavy wooden ladders and wrenches with longer handles so they had more leverage being easier to use. A reporter interviewed some of the men about the changes and asked what they thought. One man replied, "Everything is so much easier now. I wish we did this a long time ago."

Edit: I heard this story in the 80s when I was a kid. It may be real or not, but the point is the same. I'm still looking for the FWD: FWD: FWD: but I've never heard it again since the mid 80s.

> A Baby Bell utilities company lost a court case in the 60s

No it didn't; the Baby Bells were created by the 1984 breakup of AT&T.

EDIT: As a sibling post provides details, the error was calling it a "Baby Bell"; the essence of the story, at least the lawsuit itself, is true, but Southern Bell was a pre-breakup Bell Operating Company (an AT&T subsidiary), not a post-breakup Baby Bell. [Errors like pointing to a Baby Bell 20ish years before they existed are often, but as this incident shows not always, signs of folk mythology.]

The case was real, dunno about the new tools part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorena_Weeks

And perhaps this perception, true or false, that women need to be handled with kid gloves and will flounce out at the slightest microprovocation is hurting women's chances of being hired.

You said “this perception” then described some very different perception that I don’t hold.

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