So you think there is a market failure in pricing these workers? What do you think is causing it?
In this case, the bias against people returning to work is based more on prjokections about what will happen than anything concrete. Those projections, in turn, are based on traditional notions that once a woman has kids and has become a mother, she can never again be relied on to prioritize work. That ignores the basic fact that parenting is only really time-intensive for the first couple of years.
People returning from paternity leave are not banned from any jobs.
The question is still: why can businesses get away with paying less? It would seem that their demand for these workers is not high enough, or they can enough workers without the missing experience. Otherwise, they would be competing for these workers and wages would go up.
There were no laws against hiring women/jews/black people into professional positions in the 20th century. The market chose to categorically exclude them until the government made it illegal to do so.
> The question is still: why can businesses get away with paying less?
Because businesses can engage in irrational hiring behaviors so long as the irrationality is widely shared.
I don't know that much about the history of the US, but it seems Jim Crow laws were in effect till 1965? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
Women, as I said, had other things to do, before the invention of the washing machines.
The question remains, why not found a company hiring those supposedly cheaper workers, and blow the competition out of the water?
I suppose a company hiring only blacks in the early 20th century would have been unable to sell it's wares because of racism?
Are software developers on a "market for lemons"? Because employers presumably can't know how good a developer is, they bid too low, which in turn makes good developers avoid the market altogether? (ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons )
Also, there seems to be a market rate for developers, which is usually not a bad salary. What is the reasoning for assuming most of them are underpaid? Because a lot are 10 times developers?
Is it about information asymmetry, or worse, complete unknowns because even the developers themselves don't know how good they are?
Would helping developers discover how good they are help their cause? Do sites like HackerRank help, or are the problem sets not relevant enough to the real world?