> There is nothing discriminatory going on.
I have no wish to argue about what discrimination means, but I think you have a rather narrow (and largely useless) interpretation of "completely gender neutral", whereby something can be deemed completely gender neutral regardless of whether it generates a huge difference in outcome by gender. After all, there are always individual differences among members of each gender, so if we have to ignore the averages, then what's left? According to your interpretation, it seems that the only issues that are not completely gender neutral are specifically where men are required to do X and women not-X, which as I said is largely useless for practical discussion (one of the few examples is the US Selective Service, which does discriminate by both gender and age).
The main question to me is not just whether an outcome is actually unequal, the question is whether an outcome is predictably unequal. When someone applies an input, allegedly gender neutral, that they know in advance will produce important gender differences in output, how can they honestly claim that it's completely gender neutral? That's not fooling me, at any rate; it seems more like self-deception.
Let me put it this way: if you wanted to discriminate against a certain class of people, but you needed plausible deniability, then what would you do? You would select arbitrary criteria, allegedly neutral, that play the averages and tend to filter out the undesirables. It's not perfect discrimination, some false positives and negatives, but "better" than nothing, right?
> Just like requiring certain standards of physical fitness for firefighters that more men than women can meet is not discrimination.
This seems like a rather minor issue. It's a special case. I don't think it carries much weight overall, pardon the pun. The economy doesn't seem to be littered with disappointed firefighter wannabes. "I want to be a firefighter" is what children say, not generally what adult women are saying about gender inequality.
Regardless, I don't think it makes much sense to compare physical fitness standards for firefighters and late-night drinking "fitness" for business. Nobody is going to die if you don't drink, though somebody could die if you do drink! Drinking is not even a plausibly reasonable requirement for work.
> I don't emphasise them. But I also don't deny them.
Well, I've known you for years, and I've observed that you constantly go out of your way to argue with strangers on the internet about gender. Of course I'm doing it in this submission, but I can't even begin to match your prolificness, nor do I aspire to. ;-)
Anyway, quibbling aside, the larger issue is that there are often perfectly rational explanations for why women tend to avoid certain employment situations, explanations that have nothing to do with "gender preferences", unless you would claim that "not wanting to get sexually harassed or assaulted" is just a preference.