Tech Executive Brags He Was Able To Hire Talented Women ‘Relatively Cheap’ Compared To Men

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/26/3572572/tech-exec-gender-wage-gap/

by Bryce Covert Posted on September 26, 201

Evan Thornley, an Australian tech executive and former politician, told a technology startup conference that when he ran a previous company, he was able to get talented women who were “relatively cheap” because of the gender wage gap.

He started out by saying that the undervaluation of women in technology presented an opportunity for his online advertising company LookSmart. “Call me opportunistic, I just thought I could get better people with less competition because we were willing to understand the skills and capabilities that many of these women had,” he said

But then he went on to say, “There’s a great arbitrage there, we would give [women] more responsibility and a greater share of the rewards than they were likely to get anywhere else and that was still often relatively cheap to someone less good of a different gender.” He said he didn’t want the gender wage gap to necessarily continue, but that it provides “an opportunity for forward thinking people.” He also drew blowback for including a slide that sarcastically said: “Women: Like men, only cheaper.”

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He said he doesn’t hire the overrated, over-paid men in the sector and “others may find it a good decision for their business to hire talented women and pay them properly rather than hire less talented men and over-pay them.”

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There’s also a surplus of women to choose from if a company wants to hire them. Women hold 41 percent of science and engineering degrees but fill just over a quarter of all technology jobs. A handful of big name tech companies — Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, and Yahoo — recently released their workforce demographics and no company had more than a quarter women among their technology employees.

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