Furthermore, so many men in tech are quick to explain away statistics about women/minorities being hired less by saying, "There's no bias! It's because they're not as skilled!" But when stats show that women advance faster, the story flips, and suddenly it's, "This proves bias! There's no way it's due to skill!"
Come on, HN, we're better than this.
It's not a hard argument to make that women (and many other underrepresented people) are subjected to a stricter filter in the tech world, playing with a deck socially and structurally stacked against them. It's no surprise at all that people who can find success despite playing on a harder difficulty level will be among the most capable. An article like this is actually heartening, as it indicates that achievement and ability are internally recognized.
And now I've broken one of my cardinal rules (don't engage with social flamewar threads on HN), but you're exactly right - many of these comments are too embarrasing to let pass.
edit: calex just made this point far better than I in another comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015
Then suddenly when women are promoted more often than men, your story becomes "Women are just smarter than men, it's normal". Can't you just have a little compassion for men who didn't have the skills and deserve to be pushed and taught a little bit? And the prejudice about "men are stupid" is repeated in many innocent settings:
- https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wis...
- Everyone can cite 10 qualities of women, especially smartness [1].
- You can't quote any quality attributed to men. There's none, no quality attributed to men in any newspaper, in any document, in any culture. "What about muscles?" The thing about muscles is, women reckon we have strength because it would be hard to deny it and it helps construct the idea that we're violent. But muscles also help build the image of men being stupid, and it doesn't give us a skill.
This prejudice does have real-world effects:
- Men are twice more likely to be homeless or to fail their studies,
- Men are 30 times more likely to land in prison.
THIRTY times! But somehow, women succeed to capture all the work we do for equality.
The fact you're unconscious about male difficulties shows how much work there's left to do about male equality. The progress we've made for women about equality of chances and freedom of pursuing good jobs, we now need to make it for men too. Since you're talking about politics, the fact that the only way to "vote for men equality" is to vote for Trump is a horrible abomination: I want equality, I'm keen to vote for a woman, but if that means that she'll do even more to accentuate the "privileged path" for women and accentuate messages breeding hate between women and men, then you're asking a voter to make... a dangerous choice.
[1] Qualities that are generally attributed to women: "Women are better at multitasking" – where scientific studies are much more gray-area than that; "Women are better at communication" – where in fact it's males who are handicapped about communication and who deserve some equality budget for "education to communication" and "education to feelings"; "Women are better at tastes and decoration" which harms the participation of many interested men in decoration topics; "Women are more mature, earlier" when in fact this maturity is judged on a biased set of responsabilities; "Women are better at raising children" which creates unprecedented disadvantages for men who want the custody of their child, and finally, "Women are better at school" when in fact it's teacher bias which gives them better marks ( http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 ) – As you can see I'm very well documented on every quality which is theoretically attributed to women and where, in fact, it's just that many papers are unfairly condescending towards men.
---
To put this very dispassionately, filtering more aggressively reduces both total count and false positives (if the filter shares any correlation with success). The population subjected to the stricter filter will have a higher percentage of people who are deserving of promotion.
This would be true even if we limited our entire workforce to ivy league white men and then applied an additional filter to a random subset of them. If the filter correlates, the subset will outperform. I don't mean to say this is the only thing impacting who works where and how successful they are, but it is certainly present.
You're responding to an argument that I didn't make. The global population statements about which gender is "smarter" are your own.
Regarding Trump (I'm pretty sure I didn't bring this up, either), his recent exhibit of repeatedly mentioning that he was being shortchanged on time during the debate while actually having (negligibly) more time to speak (~40min vs ~39min) is a perfect illustration of the “prejudice” you're describing. When used to a privileged position, equality feels like bias.
(Debate time to speak, pick your source: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+clinton+time+to+speak)
You're correct, I answered to both parents in one comment, and found it useful to put my comment under yours because you had a very common objection, although I forgot to address it.
Concerning the "filter" story, how do you know girls just aren't just less interested in programming? Example that may be the norm: I've tried many times to get my god-daughter interested in computers, but the computer/tablet/phone/electricity/mechanics/woodworks/Mythbusters thingy really doesn't raise any interest or even bare curiosity. She just does it because she loves spending time with me, but remembers nothing.
If there were a genetic or social construct that made that fewer girls identify with programming, then it would kill the argument that "due to filtering, women are better" and reinforce the argument that "Women are promoted, not because they're better, but because companies are required to promote women".
And in fact, studies have demonstrated that fewer girls are interested in programming because of society.
I agree! But why? And when? And is it just girls? The filter I'm talking about extends far beyond and is applied far earlier than the job interview, or the application to college, or which classes someone takes in high school. The paths laid out for all of us have varying degrees of difficulty, and shape how we grow.
Speaking as a white male from California who grew up with a computer in the house, in many ways my own career in tech is the path of least resistance. Sure, I've worked hard and chose to invest myself in these skills and this career, but the impediments to doing so were much, much less significant than the social and structural biases that people with other backgrounds run into at every. single. step.
Simply recognizing that I got to shoot for the hoop from a few feet closer than the rest of the population has given me a great respect for those who made the same shot from farther out. It's not that an individual like myself (like you?) with an advantaged position couldn't overcome the same challenges, we simply have not been tested in the same ways. I don't mean to speak for you as an individual, only that over a large enough group you're going to see a lot more people make it who got to take the easier shot.
I think our fundamental disagreement is that you're saying people like me (perhaps us?) don't actually get that easier shot. And that I simply do not believe, because of my experience in and observation of this industry, and because of the near-endless supply of evidence to the same. [citation needed: plenty in this thread, and every thread like it]
It could be a social construct of genders where male babies are exposed to other things than female babies, it wouldn't matter. The girl (e.g. my god-daughter) who likes chemistry goes into chemistry and is not being "discriminated against because she didn't go into programming". And your argument is in the same family that says there should be 50% women in programming because there's 50% females at birth.
You're also focussed on demonstrating that men get an easier shot. But if women who want to do programming can do it with no more barriers than men, then no-one is being discriminated against. And in fact, today, if a girl takes programming, she'll have a better career than men, because we promote women. There are countless stories that "women are harassed in IT", but they are all anecdotal and match with the global story told to girls since birth: "You're a victim, and you should spend your whole life finding occurrences where you can prove that you're a victim". It's not a tin-hat stuff I've invented, it's what, for example, the brand Always teaches to little girls with the #LikeAGirl video.
To come back to stories about girls being harassed: Is there a scientific experiement that we could do to prove that women really have a harder time than men, when we include sexual harassment of course, but also include when a weak male like me have been victims of some alpha manager, and include stories of men being fired because a woman doesn't like them (And I have live examples such as: Douglas Crockford, the PyCon conference story, the GitHub ceos, the GitHub's white males who've been fired, and two colleagues from my Australian company)?
All in all, I see women promoted all the time, I see women receiving a warm welcome in every team, I see many males being extra carful about including women, I see many downvotes and condemnation when someone posts a sexist remark on HN, I see corporate help to ensure women are untouchable and promoted: Not to paint the real world with rainbows, but I won't just buy into a story of a few women saying "You can't learn programming when you're a girl".
I also receive 20-50 upvotes when I remind people that women need to work too, so the feeling that women are too unfairly advantaged before they're really competent seems to be a common resentment across the community. Just try to think about what we'd do if we wanted peace. We certainly wouldn't try to accentuate victimization so much, and wouldn't try to have different paths for men and women (hard lonely work with no help for men who'll stay programmers, little programming but a lots of socializing and girls-in-web groups for women who'll become managers). And we certainly wouldn't have the following video, which is both dishonest towards men and an incitation to hate for female viewers:
Unity, peace and solidarity is something we build together, unless it's not unity, peace or solidarity that we want. And women certainly aren't currently working for that.
Companies can't legally discriminate against men, but they can (and many do) post up at women engineer conferences and give interviews out like candy to people from that conference. They're discriminating based on where they source the resume from. The source just happens to be made up of all females. That's what Grace Hopper is for.
So, why isn't it?
Edit: maybe it's a sign of things getting "better". Women already working are on average better at what they do, and as people become more aware of the problem it's easier for them to become promoted because the filter isn't as strict when compared to X years ago.
At the hiring stage, it is mostly a crapshoot, and they don't really know if you are good or not, so it is easier for biases to get in the way.
It doesn't mean there aren't problems and discrimination against women but you act like his point is not valid and not even worth acknowledging. You just feel "embarrassed". You should feel that way but not because of the comment but because your attitude.
This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects.
None of tajen's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. It's hyperbolic unsubstantiated fear-mongering in an attempt to minimize another group's problems while magnifying his own. He has to resort to such tactics, otherwise women's problems will be treated with greater urgency than men's (as they should be). I was embarrassed to see these comments at the top of HN, and I'm happy that people have since come to their senses and downvoted them to where they belong.
Yep. It's not incompatible. Maybe most women don't want to spend their life in front of a computer. Maybe, as Margeritte Yourcenar used to mention, being a head of IT is a shit life and women are more clever than men in not trying to get so high. Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion.
> This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects.
This is a much more serious offense, and straight illegal in any developed economy (I hope). But if I had to hire a woman in my company, I'd be very afraid that hiring a woman leads to an (unwarranted) harassment accusation against the CEO like it so often did (GitHub and so many others, I'm looking at you), so I'd probably weigh whether it's worth sticking with a discrimination lawsuit risk. I'd probaboy still hire the woman, though, for ethics. But I would probably keep her in a separate room from me, just to dodge sexual harassment claims. What a f'cked world we live in. Can't even have a normal behaviour with women.
> None of taken's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever.
Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is:
- Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact,
- OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf),
- There are laws that require companies to promote women as much as men and to reach quotas of managers.
- ...along with the dozen other comments with factual references and links I've posted today.
My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.
Maybe women want to be at the bottom of the workplace totem poll? Are you seriously going to begin your hypothesizing there? Every single racist from the past said, "I've met plenty of coloreds and they're happy being slaves/segregated/living in ghettos!" It is absolutely ridiculous to begin there while discrimination is still looming large.
> Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion.
I never claimed these numbers alone are proof of discrimination. The discrimination has been proven in other ways, and these numbers simply highlight how effective it's been.
> Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is:
Readers, note that I attacked his evidence, and his response is to attack my personality.
> - Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact,
Strong fact? Your anecdotal evidence is worth zero. Around me I see <1% Trump voters. Doesn't change the fact that he has 43% of the nation's vote.
> - OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf),
Numerous people in this thread (and elsewhere, e.g. pg) have produced competing hypotheses for why women might be getting promoted faster. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore their reasoning, I suppose I can't stop you. It makes you look sexist, though, and it's why I and many others were embarrassed to see your comment.
> My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.
Rational reasoning? I'm not the one who needs to resort to ridiculous hyperboles to make my point. You speak of a generation of men being sacrificed, but there's no solid evidence to show that we're doing worse than women (quite the opposite). You speak of sexism being dead, but evidence shows women are still discriminated against in the workplace. You've completely failed to defend either of the claims I attacked.
It sucks that you've had it so rough. I don't doubt that the women in your particular life may have had unfair advantages in many ways. That's frustrating. I might be pissed, too. I also have a friend with an ex-wife who controls his kid, and it's infuriating. But cheer up. You have plenty to live for, and the world's not as bad as it may seem.
It appears that you are more opposed to his stance on the issue.
It's not that "Wimmin' are takin' our jerbs!", he was just pointing out that promoting women because they have a vagina is just as bad as promoting someone because they have a penis or white skin.
Why not promote how well you do your job?
That statistically can not be the case, right?
There are about 50/50 men women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals.
So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women.
Right?
I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
#2: In a system in which women are discriminated against, it takes extra grit for women to push through, get hired, and do the work anyway. These are women who really want it very badly. The cream of the crop. Therefore it's not surprising to see them perform better than their male peers on average.
#3: In a system in which women have historically been discriminated against, there will be lots of men with jobs they don't deserve. When women begin to enter the workforce in greater numbers, these men will be the first to lose their jobs to rising women.
I could go on. There are plenty of reasons why women might be getting promoted faster. One should not immediately jump to the conclusion that it's solely due to affirmative action quotas with no evidence to back that up. The world is more complex than that.
If favoritism (or some sort of -ism) is/was responsible for all of men's achievements or stations -- isn't the converse true?
Doesn't that mean that if women rise through the ranks faster than men, that there is preferential treatment?
Otherwise, you would pretty much have to say that men and women are different on some fundamental intellectual level. Is that what you are saying?
Or are you just saying that preferential treatment is ok, just if it is your preference that is being treated?
You were suggesting in the top comment that women are being given jobs because they are women (rather than men), and that that is unjust. I don't see the difference between that statement and the idea that women are "taking" (i.e., unjustly acquiring) jobs (which would otherwise have been men's.)
I did not.
However, since you bring it up, women statistically can not move up the ranks faster than men, right?
There are about 50/50 men/women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals.
So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women. Right?
I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
I am suggesting that "we should hire more women" is every bit as sexist as "we should hire more men".
If you want to get rid of all -isms, why not do blind hires based on resume/testing (weighted some way)?
Yes you are. You have completely confused everything I have written, even though I thought it was in plain English.
> Do you think women are being given jobs that should have gone to men in a fair world or not?
I think people should hire blindly using blind job tests and weighted experience/education. That would get rid of all "-isms".
I imagine that people would still find something to bitch about, though.
I guess you have to get used to such "configurations", given that in a fully equal world having both a female team lead and manager is entirely possible. Or how does this confirm your claim that women are unfairly promoted more frequently?
The reason for quicker promotions is probably a skewed distribution of personalities, as also mentioned further below. Men of all personalities are more likely to start science and engineering degrees because they are nurtured into it by society anyway. Women have to be the kind of person that does not care about such biases, and develops and follows interests.
Therefore we had between 0% and 5% women in technical teams, and 75% in management.
There's no point at which feminists stop looking out for women at the expense of men.
That's how you maximize your productivity and efficiency and, by extension, profit. It also motivates people because they know they are much closer to a true meritocracy.
Only the companies with enough profit margins can afford to concern themselves with this inclusion/empowerment drivel, because they can hire "fluff" employees to boost their diversity or whatever other metrics they want to use to make them feel good about themselves.
My point was that even if the model you described in that sentence part is broadly correct, the "nobody" part is inconsistent with the rest of the model because at some level people respondent to public opinion must care about the those "yelling:.
A separate thread has a much more plausible explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686822
What? The article in the title just says "Women are promoted in 9 years against 12 for men", and you qualify examples as anecdotal?
TL;DR: genital integrity (no circumcision), no draft, parental rights, privileged in courts. Differs by country, of course (e.g. in some EU countries, men have to work longer to retire).
It's sad that blatantly obvious differences between genders are fought when they are bad for women (STEM employement, rape, home violence) and ignored when they are bad for man (suicide rate, life expectancy, rights after divorce).
I doubt we will ever see positive discrimination for male patients in hospitals for example, even if it could decrease the life expectancy gap :)
Also car insurance https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/05/car-insurance-...
it's only 3-4 years at 25 y.o. Still significant. Also I would like data from other countries, I suspect they are worse.
So don't circumcise your son.
If all rapists realized today that they shouldn't rape, and stopped doing it, then no more rape.
Now the only way to even start down a path like that is to start letting people know "don't rape". She's too drunk to walk straight? Don't. She says no? Don't. etc...
Opposing male circumcision doesn't require complaining about how females are privileged. Educate people on why they don't really need to chop up their babies penis.
There has not been a draft in 50 years.
Privilege in courts has been shown to be bullshit time and time again. Men who attempt to receive custody of their children actually get them more than 50% of the time.
I'm at work and don't feel like googling in depth circumcision articles, but "genital integrity" is a ridiculous minimization of the issues faced by women who have actually had their genitals mutilated. If anyone wants to dig up the citations for me, I'd appreciate it. But, this isn't a circumjerk article, so this is as far down the chain as I'll go.
You're misremembering your studies -- women who are sentenced to prison (for felonies) receive roughly the same prison sentences as men. They are however, significantly less likely to be sentenced. But, they are also significantly less likely to commit violent crimes, which you have to take into account in your analysis.
"Starr's research incorporates disparities found at those earlier stages, and finds that "more disparity is introduced at each phase of the justice process.""
(my emphasis).
https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_g...
[1] http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-j... [2] http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/02/06/009385481456...
"After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." "
Same link as before. My emphasis.
"Pre-charge characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain about 80% of these disparities" [1]
1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377
Sigh.
The study you linked is titled "Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences", says so right at the top, you just have to read it. It is not the study talked about in the press-release I linked to. It is referenced in said press-release as the "previous study" that found racial disparities, which were found to be 6 times smaller than the gender disparities found in the study that the press release is about.
Which is this one:
Here is another contradictory study [1], along with a link to an ABA article explaining why some differences in sentencing should not only be expected, but potentially encouraged [2].
1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1993.... 2. http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_mag...
There has not been a draft in 50 years.
Extra points for higher education, even in studies traditionally dominated by women like nurse and chemistry.
- In France, the last law about gender equality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12688339
- In France, organizations which support only women, by statute (see last link). In USA, "Girlz In Web" and all similar ventures.
- In France, aid and support that is only dedicated to women (excluding child-bearing support, which is deserved), where there's no mirror support for male problems.
Could you name some of those advantages, and link to the relevant laws? I'm interested to see what you're talking about.
I'm French, so unfortunately I'll quote the French law. On the upside this law was an election promise of the current government (left-wing, socialist), so you're really reading the outcome of a current debate: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...
- First, let's note overall that there's no law that reserves something to men. It would be illegal. Obviously.
- Let's also drop that women have a 10% longer life. It means their retirement is 6 years longer than men's average of 18 years.
- Point #5 says "Fight against the poverty of women". What about the poverty of men? There are twice more homeless men than women. There are 30 times more men in prison than women. I see what they mean when they think about the poverty of women, but men need specific help that's attached to their gender. Failing their education and dealing drugs falls in that bucket.
- Point #8 says "Equality of women headcount in politics". It's great, I like it, I'm all for equality of women in all areas including politics. But what about sectors where men are less frequent? One argument I often hear about women equality is "We're also fighting for a men, look at male nurse for example", where, in fact, those laws about "equality" don't fight for the equality of men in the nurse area.
- Point #10 says "Make studies known about the social construction of gendered roles." One very actual gendered construct is that, as a woman, you'll get much more help. First because you naturally inspire kindness and solidarity, thanks to your body, gender and image. Second because there are big budgets allocated to women equality (e.g. benefits for creating a company[1], organizations that support you while you create your company[2]). And last, the social construct of genders is built upon years of communicating to women that they need help, and the government especially participates to this when they have http://femmes.gouv.fr but don't have http://hommes.gouv.fr .
All in all, this law only cares about equality when women are impacted. If it were for men, you would see sections like "Fighting against the men-related prejudices", "Fighting for male dropouts", "Fighting for dad custody", "Fighting against street violence" (which mostly impacts men), "Fighting for kids who don't like football" (as a gay man, I can tell you it's really tough to feel abandoned when all your schoolmates play ball in so many occasions).
Anyway, I don't feel like we're trying to close the gap: We're rather generating more hate both ways by increasing the care about one gender and not the other [3]. If you want peace, don't tease the losers.
[1] Benefits reserved for women: http://www.familles-enfance-droitsdesfemmes.gouv.fr/dossiers...
[2] Organizations that support women only: http://www.ellesentreprennent.fr/pid14416/les-reseaux-au-ser...
[3] Common-life example of increasing the resent between men and women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhB3l1gCz2E
Yes clearly overall women have much lower chances to rise to the top. You are complaining that a tiny section of the pipeline from birth to CEO potentially favours women while obviously the vast majority of parts of the pipeline favour men. Cumulatively they do so heavily.
What you experienced is a tiny fraction of what women experienced to get to the point where you felt blocked.
That leads men to leave such companies and start their own businesses. Small companies are often more agile and innovative and far more likely to make founders and skilled employees rich.
So the programs to promote women (and underrepresented minorities) that are intended to achieve equality just promote even more unfair advantages for men. It's a common pattern: even the best designed policies need to be constantly expanded so that unfair advantages for men can be mitigated.
But no one can say that the proliferation of small innovative companies is bad for society. New innovative ideas make all our lives better, and some of that is owed to big corporate HR departments encouraging more entrepreneurship by limiting promotion opportunities for men.
Women who decide they want to join a high risk, high gain startup and have the skills to do so, are free to and do just that.
Men who decide they want to be treated equally have to leave their stable jobs for startups.
edit: formating
Were the discriminatory practices that led Jews to start their own business also an "unfair advantage for the Jews"?
Also, do you have any principle beyond "I have negative feelings" which suggests I shouldn't discuss certain human experiences? If so, what is it?
Someone, I'm sure, will rebut this comment with an example of a successful founder who started their company due to oppressive affirmative action policies. But you worded your comment as if this was some kind of obvious industry norm. It is not; you should reword.
OP's study about women being promoted 25% faster than men just means it's an industry norm to promote women.
At least nowadays. I'd like to attract your attention that the world is changing, I'm happy with more equality at my workplace, and women were obviously oppressed in workplaces I've been to 10 years ago. Just, at least, not today in UK anyway.
Also, you mention your experience is focused in the startup world, which differs from the employment scene at large.
Does this include your own? Because based on the rest of your comment, I'm not so sure.
But that will keep a status quo if one group is starting out as a serious minority. That's the whole point of equality movements: you have to adjust upwards for a bit, until it's actually equal. Then you can go back to being fair.
EDIT: This thread is blowing up, so I want to clarify my comment: I'm talking about affirmative action, and I think it's a good idea in the case of women in tech, presently.
- https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/st...
- http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-...
- http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-b...
Look at the top 1000 names from 1995, the next birth year that will be graduating from college en masse. "Jessica" is the top name for girls, while it doesn't even appear in the top 1000 for boys. http://www.babynames.it/top100/1/year-1995.html
Premise: in STEM fields, female- and POC-signifying names receive significantly fewer responses to otherwise identical résumés
Conclusion: in the hiring process in STEM fields, people are discriminated against based solely on their perceived gender and race
That is the literal definition of sexism and racism. How is that not unfortunate or problematic?
My original point was that in addition to gender and race, names signal cultural affiliation. Many Asian immigrants to the West adopt Western first names in order to signal Western cultural affiliation. I would hypothesize they get more resume responses. This plays into gender as well. I might be comfortable with "Jessica" as my accountant but less so with "Envy" or "Desiree" or whatever. The preferences being expressed are not based solely on gender/race as in your conclusion, but rather likelihood to adhere to various cultural norms, some pertaining to direct job-related productivity, and others pertaining to general socialization and fitting in. I see no problem with Western companies expressing preference for Western cultural norms anymore than Chinese companies doing the same (respectively) in China.
Another interpretation of the study is simply that the companies historically have had more success with whitemale name hires and are simply using the cheapest predictive signal available to maximize hiring ROI. This is unfair to good hires with off-culture names, but I'm not sure what a fix is.
If it makes you feel better I would presume white males are discriminated against in non-Western societies but I have no hard evidence for that, except for maybe South Africa where it's explicit law.
Sooooo "female culture" isn't a part of Western cultural norms? Or Black culture? Asian culture? These are all peoples that have been here for hundreds of years. The culture they share is certainly different from that of their home country. When do they get to call their culture "Western?" When white people say it's okay?
You don't want to cop to it, but all you're doing is making excuses for white men to discriminate against others. It's not okay.
It's not OK to include this in a comment, no matter what you're replying to.
In America during the '50s, did black people demand white people to not be allowed to sit in the front of the bus until everyone was "actually equal"?
But I think you make a good point.
On the other hand, I've left those companies because I could notice there was no career path for me, and created my own. I identify to a generation of men who've been sacrified for women equality. I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. I'm very happy that we now start having studies supporting that men are less promoted than women today in some context (a minima in Luxembourg, France and Australia for what I'm concerned).
It's now time we study across all countries the mean-time-to-promotion, and it's time we include talks in conferences about the difficulties of men.
And it's time we stop having differentiated education and career paths for women. Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws.