>>>IOW, we are losing talented people left and right, because they don't see that staying in the game gets them anything worth the trouble. At least half of these are women.
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>>There is no simple way around it. Maybe with the problems in the financial markets going on right now, hirers will begin to get the message that the thing to do is to hire the best people they can find for the positions they need to fill. If that ends up with parity, fine. If not, fine.
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>>Nice dream, huh?
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>And when you wake up, you've fallen out of bed. For the employers to hire the best people they can find would require them to think long term, and to be capable of thinking long term. However, there's very little incentive for any business to think long term - their attention span is next quarter. If they, as a whole, were that smart, they wouldn't have painted themselves into this corner in the first place, right? I mean, what caused this whole mess? Deregulation they wanted, deregulation they got, so they could do what they like the best, take ludicrous risks for short term gains, the more the better, and apres moi, le deluge. So we have a flood on our hands, because we had politicians who gave in to the pressure and lifted the dams (and switched sides after their term).
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>> It's easy to say "equal pay for equal work", but in the real world, how often is the work really equal? The position may be the same, but that's often about where it ends.
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>One thing about women is that they may be less prone to play the power games, get into chest thumping contests, boast and generally do whatever PR males may do (my history in corporate environment is quite short - I was mostly in small shops, so I wouldn't know). While history has taught them some sneaky techniques, that's because they've learned that battlefield is not their field... which also means being skipped for promotions, raises and generally staying out of sight - which then, in turn, means staying low. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary may exist, but then there's anecdotal evidence for anything. In places where the corporate policy is created on the line stretching from the first hole to the last drink, you probably won't meet too many women in command positions.

I do believe that you're talking about something a couple of decades out of date. Power games are now a co-ed sport.