How do female programmers differ from male programmers? I find this offensive. There are better ways to help promote programming among women. Equal salaries for starters could be a real equaliser.
</sarcasm>
I'm pretty damn sure GitHub can't affect the salaries of women that aren't direct employees of them. In what way does GitHub doing what it can do, which is donate to an organization like the Ada Initiative, cause offense?
The comment about hiring was mostly an aside as something else I wish they were taking more active efforts with in addition to efforts like this one.
(And please no one post that tired old $0.73 number that is averaged over all jobs, all roles, all hours-per-week!)
One thing I'm curious to know is, of that 9-12%, for people hired at the same salary band or experience level[1], would there be differences between men's and women's salaries? And if so, what would they be? In such a case, the comparison would be meaningful.
[1] for example, comparing within salary bands or job titles: Associate SE, SE, Senior SE, Principal SE.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/average-2012-us-dev-salary-8400...
Reading this makes me think: if women make more in the programming sector than any other field, why do we feel so downtrodden? To be honest, aside from a few experiences when I was young I've not experienced any misogyny from my peers, but I do almost daily from customers. I think I may be really happy because I'm with an amazing team who care about each other. I take the time to build my team's character and it pays off when I need the extra support.