Another insurer to add: Wawanesa. They supposedly have the cheapest rates, consistently, if you have a clean record. If you don't, they won't insure you.
From Business Insider: "In addition, Pao alleges that females in the firms were often left out of dinner meetings held by male counterparts. She says women weren't invited because they would "kill the buzz.""
I imagine the men want to hang out with one another and exclude women so that they can talk freely, without having to worry about 'creating a hostile work environment,' eg, by talking about sex, their marriages, etc. So their options are:
a) invite the women out with them and behave the same, and risk getting sued for a "hostile work environment."
b) exclude the women from these dinners.
c) include them, but refrain from speaking freely, thereby 'killing the buzz.'
d) eliminate the dinners altogether, which may lead to reduced morale, engagement, commitment, etc.
I'm not stating a position here, but identifying that, even if this specific allegation is true, it's not necessarily spiteful, and that each course of action has pros and cons. The same thing happens with say, recovering alcoholics – they’re constantly invited to functions where alcohol is served when they’ve sworn off the stuff, but they can’t sue over their discomfort; nor do they get upset when others enjoy alcohol.
On the other hand, excluding anyone on any basis from associating with higher-ups is bound to hurt their chances of being promoted up the ladder.
The other allegations are more problematic, if true.
I was going to say something similar, although it would have been more polemical ;)...
Eugenics is a bad example because it is something popularly believed to be false, not least among those who consider themselves knowledgeable, but in reality, is not necessarily scientifically baseless.
Often, it is precisely those who bid you "question everything!" and "speak truth to power!" who will brook no dissent when their deeply held beliefs come up for debate. One example, related to eugenics, is the study of intelligence. A survey of scientific experts in the field[1] found that a far greater proportion of them supported the 'hereditarian hypothesis' of intelligence being partly heritable, than the media let on; the views the press described as 'beyond the pale' among scientists were actually common, if not orthodox, among the actual scientists, even on the most controversial of questions.
The real story is that these scientists don't publicize their findings lest their field falls into disrepute and their funding gets pulled. Instead, they labor quietly, proceeding apace with their research in obscure journals unknown to the public.
Ashkenazi Jews comprise a significant fraction of the population of Israel, and they are a rather intellectually fecund group. Ashkenazim earned roughly a quarter of Nobel prizes, Fields medals, ACM Turing awards, and over 60% of John Bates Clark medals, and account for roughly a quarter of Ivy League students.
Those figures above come from a population where Ashkenazi Jews comprise 2% of the population. They constitute at least 10x as much of the population proportionally, in Israel. (It's hard to get an exact figure due to admixture between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews.)
Having an abundance of such people, relative to America, has surely helped. The specific circumstances surrounding Israel and its birth help to channel its brightest people into startups and technology, and less into law, finance and policy, as in America.