I've just been listening to the Freakonomics podcast from back in February on Uber and the gender pay gap, and I found it frustrating.
They found a pay gap of 7% (women on the raw end of this of course) and were confused as their algorithm is gender blind, and because all staff work flexi hours they thought it would even out.
It didn't of course, so they looked into the reasons and decided it was.
1 - women tend to work different hours to men (eg. men more likely to work the graveyard shift)
2 - women aren't with the company as long as men so possibly aren't there long enough to learn the tricks to maximise profit
3 - women drive slower than men so do less jobs per hour
The bit that got me is they kept going on and on about how they'd absolutely eliminated human discrimination from the system, except they hadn't. While the rates were worked out by computer, and they said there was no difference between which drivers were rejected by customers, they never looked into why women weren't staying so long.
I think they said men were normally there 2 years as opposed to women's 6 months.
Given their history of ignoring sexual assault by their drivers I can't help wondering how supportive they are of their female drivers if they are harassed or assaulted by male customers. Or if they have taken any note of the attitudes the female drivers faced whilst driving.
I used to work in a store that sold geeky stuff, and I found myself worn down by the constant sexist comments and attitudes from customers. In that environment I was definitely not keen on sticking around long term because it was exhausting to deal with that on top of doing my job. I can imagine it having an effect for other women too.