When you can't call everyone in for an interview, you call in the more promising candidates.
Where did I say "call everyone in"? I believe what I said was:
that's why you call *both* candidates in for interviews
If you don't have time to interview your top two candidates, you're doing something wrong. Seriously.
Good strawman, though.
I'm going to stick with my opinion on parenting, little girls are raised to be little girls, and boys boys.
We're not in disagreement, here, and I was certainly not arguing.
one wonders if women will actually get anything better when (as Pao states) men are better at it
Well, yes, one does wonder. How do you propose we find out? I say try it; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. My experience shows me, though, that men aren't necessarily better at negotiation, we're just better at starting negotiations.
Lets start with parents, marketing, and babies.
So many times this! Especially the marketing! I can imagine it would be quite difficult to parent one's child in opposition of the marketing of the day. Sure, you can shield them from marketing at home, but they'll get it fro mall angles in public, including from classmates at school.
Too late for the older others to do anything but "pretend".
And that's where we disagree. You see, it's the "older others" who have to change the marketing and parenting. The kids sure as hell can't do it. In the mean time, those of us who are so inclined can certainly do much more than pretend; we can give equal opportunities where we have the authority to do so, and we can urge others to do the same. I'm certainly not pretending I can change the hiring practices of an entire company, but I can damn well be fair in who I personally hire.
Actually... being a sole proprietor and the sole person in charge of hiring for my business, I can change the hiring practices of an entire (albeit very small) company. Since I hire equally, though, I'm not sure why I'd want to.
You can do everything possible to instil a sense of civility in your children and still have little monsters.
And that doesn't negate your parental responsibility to instill a sense of civility. Sure you might not be successful, that child may experience something that destroys what you've taught them, but if you don't do your job as a parent, its guaranteed that they'll grow into little monsters.
The problem here is you think parenting is an easy job.
I never said it was easy. It's the hardest job on the planet, there's a reason I'm not doing it.
Of course it's difficult, there are outside stimuli in the system, they get plenty of input from other kids (and teachers) at school and even from the parents of other children who might not raise their kids the way you raise your own, and from people who have no business raising or interacting with children; that steps on a lot of your own work with them. That doesn't negate the fact that they learn how to interact with others by interacting with others.
Not harder, but differently.
And that's precisely why men and women should work (and learn) together! Men will point out angles that women miss, and vice versa. Happens with my wife (co-owner of my consultancy) all the time; we'd both make many more poor decisions if we couldn't work from each-others' perspectives.
I simply don't know enough about the experience and the context
Please, allow me to remedy that.
In general, I agree with your stance, treat everyone professionally and without regard for gender. However, the "without regard for gender" part can actually get you in some trouble here in the US, so it doesn't really work that way. Over here, if you and your male coworkers are having a discussion and a woman enters the room, it's almost always advisable to end that discussion so as not to offend the woman, either because someone said something she didn't like (even though she was not part of the conversation) or because she was excluded (even though she could have joined in). Here in the US, women have been given the ability to point at a man, scream "SEXUAL HARASSMENT", and destroy that man's career and life over the tiniest of perceived infractions; most won't do that unless there is a real problem, but the handful who will do it out of spite have ruined it for everyone. Again, these are most often only children, or raised in a family of all girls, and are commonly home-schooled; as a result, they never learned how to not take something that wasn't said to or directed at them personally. Interestingly this doesn't happen nearly as often in the other direction, as we're taught that men are supposed to be stronger, we're supposed to let things roll off our backs and be unaffected, but we're also taught to walk on eggshells so as not to offend women.
I wish I lived in a society where people treated each other respectfully and professionally, where the general attitude was "if it wasn't said to or about me, I won't let it bother me", where people could have workplace conversations in small groups without fear of someone who had no interest in being part of that group in the first place deciding to cause problems because they weren't included. I wish that was the reality in the US, but it simply is not. You're right, though; it's not a difficult thing. The problem is that some people don't want to put forth even the tiniest bit of effort and, over here, many are raised to believe that it's okay to benefit from destroying someone else's life.
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro