Not saying this is an easy fix, but many other liberal people I know seem shockingly uninterested in even treating this as a problem.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

Damn that hits close to home

who does this, and why?

However, I'd certainly encourage any sports fans who specifically dislike football to read what Hunter S. Thompson wrote on the subject. His passion has sold me on the merits of the game - even if it's still not my personal cup of tea.

Believe it or not, some of us are actually completely unfamiliar with it. I watched the Superbowl once about ten years ago, and that's literally the extent of my lifetime exposure to football.

"Did you see last night's game?"

"Were they playing sportsball again last night?"

"Oh yeah, you don't watch sports"

This conversation works without me having to know which sport is in season.

[citation needed]

"Poor black males might skew more criminal and violent.."

Suddenly the problem isn't how reliable a citation might be. There are few groups you're allowed criticize with statistics.

Might in that context is, a substitute for 'while it is true that' not a weasel word like probably.

What the study shows is that upper class men have a clear advantage, and everyone else is roughly in the same boat. (The callback rate among upper class women was the same as the callback rate among lower class applicants.)

There is no reason that the concept of "privilege" cannot embrace economic privilege as well as gender and racial privilege (and it should, because discrimination is happening along all those dimensions). However, at a certain point the theory comes into conflict with political reality. The current trend in American politics is various marginalized groups (women, LGBT folks, racial and religious minorities) all congregating under the same tent, even though they otherwise don't have all that much in common. The notable exception is lower class white men, who (as a generalization) are very resistant to the idea of being a part of that tent. And they disproportionately vote against the interests of the other folks in that tent.

So it appears to me that the exclusion is at least in part self-imposed.

> The differences in callback rates for higher-class women, lower-class men and lower-class women were not statistically significant, but higher-class men received significantly more callbacks than all other categories

It is very suspicious that the wording was "significantly more" instead of "statistically significant", especially when she specifically called out statistical significance for the other groups right before it.

If the difference was not statistically significant, that fact is intentionally and malevolently obfuscated.

"The higher-class male applicant had a callback rate of 16.25 percent, more than four times as high as the average callback rate for the other three applicants, who collectively generated just nine interview invitations from 235 applications, a callback rate of 3.83 percent. This fourfold difference is significant not only statistically (p < .001) but also substantively, and its magnitude is especially striking when considering the fact that applicants’ entire law school records and all academic and professional experiences were identical".

So no need for conspiracy theories.

My point still stands. Statistical significance for upper class men vs. upper class women is never mentioned.

The statistics in this instance are cooked and very misleading. It does not prove the author's point. The major claim in this article is that upper class men did much better than upper class women:

> Why did the higher-class man do so much better than the higher-class woman?

Yet the statistic only compares upper class men to everyone else.

Why did the authors choose to only mention the p-value for one category vs. everyone else? Why not other data slices?

The authors clearly calculated the p-value between individual groups (from their "not statistically significant" comment). Why did they not list these values?

It's a choice between negligent data analysis or intentional omission.

Because that's the only part that I quoted - go read the academic article yourself if you want the full analysis.

Let's just do the p-value comparison of upper-class men to upper-class women for you just to settle this. The null-hypothesis is that both categories are equally interviewed. Total of 18 people interview (13 of 80 men, 3 of 79 women). If all null-hypothesis is true, the 16 interviews would be randomly distributed into the men and women categories. The chance of getting at least 13 men would then be sum_(i=13)^16 (16 choose i) * (80/159)^i * (79/159)^(16-i) which equals p = 0.011. So much for malevolent omission!

And they stated that UM is significantly different from the other three, but that LM, UF and LF are not significantly different from each other. What more do you want?

It clearly expresses that the only one of four categories whose callback rate rises to the level of statistical significance (presumably something like p < 0.05 of null hypothesis that all rates are the same) was the rate for high-class men. The reason the sentence doesn’t include the word “statistically” in the second half is that it would sound incredibly awkward, and is not necessary to repeat.

But the point is that lower class men DID receive a lot fewer callbacks than higher class men, so clearly it is a mistake to attribute "male privilege" equally to both groups.

What we can safely say is that this study did NOT support the hypothesis that there is gender privilige for men within the lower classes in landing top law jobs, and that it would be interesting to repeat this study with a larger sample size.

That really is the elephant in the corner: the variations in privilege by gender for the white university-educated middle and upper-middle classes are barely a rounding error compared to the gulf in privilege between them and the working class, or the non-whites even of the middle class, which the framework of analysis used by their article glosses over. That is why, outside of their bubble, cries of "male privilege!" ring so hollow. Nobody likes to be lectured by someone who spends more on a coffee, than they earn in an hour. Or who drops a quarter-million dollars on a degree of no vocational use.

I don't agree with most of Marx's conclusions, but he was absolutely right in that class is the lens through which to understand societies.

But that's not true. Men got 1.8x as many callbacks as women, and upper class candidates got 2.6x as many callbacks as lower class candidates. Even if the class divide as a somewhat greater impact, the gender divide is not a "rounding error."

The other way to look at it is that the callback rate for upper class women was the same as the average callback rate for lower class applicants, and both rates are much lower than for upper class males.

Again, I'm responding to a comment that called the gender discrimination a "rounding error." It clearly is not--there is both gender and class discrimination happening and upper class women aren't better positioned than lower class applicants.

This kind of observation ("high status women are more likely to leave for family reasons therefore it is an economically rational choice to prefer men, given equal skills") seems logical on the surface, but when you start looking into the nuances of real life it just doesn't hold.

I once had a CEO say directly to me: "honestly if one of my female employees got pregnant, i would take it personally. We're a startup, we can't afford people who do that". He had no problem pushing several great engineers to burnout and firing them when their productivity tanked though.

He did give an anecdote as evidence, but the claim he was justifying was that:

> This kind of observation ("high status women are more likely to leave for family reasons therefore it is an economically rational choice to prefer men, given equal skills") seems logical on the surface, but when you start looking into the nuances of real life it just doesn't hold.

This is too strong a statement to be described as merely "stating it's an observation from personal experience".

Anyway, what's nice is that this is a forum and another commenter might answer with the data if such data/argument exists.

I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's definitely a disincentive for people to move up. Modern workplaces have unnatural expectations for employee availability.

For white shoe law firms, I don't necessarily disagree that hiring wealthy candidates doesn't make sense to the business. If your client is some Rockefeller heir, being able to chat about squash, sailing and modern art has a value.

When the industry as a whole makes a conscious effort to be more diverse in hiring, the short term incentive to put a thumb on the scale for the preferred background gradually disappears. For example, a third of all GCs and CLOs at F500 companies are now women. It makes little sense to put a thumb on the scale for men in that environment.

Is it a cause or is it an effect?

"I might agree that hiring wealthy candidates makes sense to the business"

Just parsing out those double negatives for reference.

And to do that, we first have to come to agreement, in the clear light of day, whether corporations do want that (potentially unacceptable) thing or not. Which seems to be a large problem in discussions like this: trying to talk about the way the world is butts up against people who want to talk only about the way the world should be, and don't want to acknowledge that you have to talk about both "before" and "after" if you want to get from one to the other.

That's usually regulation. Child labor is useful, no vacation time is useful and 16-hour days until your workers literally start dying is extremely useful. You would make a ton of money that way. There is no way you can spin the argument such that the company would always derive higher profits by taking the moral choice.

No, because it's nearly impossible to get even two people to always agree what the moral choice even is.

But your examples are fairly easy: all of them are clearly net negatives​ for society, and would only be profitable for companies if they don't pay the true costs of their behavior.

Child labour carries a huge opportunity cost for the child: it can't get proper education, potentially costing it millions in lifetime earnings. Given a lack of immediate financial pressure, the economically rational decision for a child would be to demand far higher pay than an equally skilled adult because the salary has to offset the labor cost.

Similar arguments can be made for working people to death and giving them no vacation, but the payment schemes become complicated. Luckily they are even easier to solve: if unemployment is an acceptable condition (little stigma, decent unemployment benefits, etc), then the pool of people willing to work such jobs vanishes.

Of course regulation also works. Sometimes​ it's the sensible option (much easier to outlaw child labour than to teach economics and long term thinking to small children). But it is always valuable to first check if we can fix the root causes of a complex problem before we start with medicating the symptoms.

Also, I'd point out that, in fact, market mechanisms did not work to stop abuses like child labor.

For example: $1000/year for a D, $2000/year for a C, $4000/year for a B, $8000/year for an A. (probably better to use national test score percentile though)

If it's irrational, educating employers may be a great option. If it's rational, we probably need to level the playing field somehow (e.g. make it just as ok for dads to stay home as it is for moms or something).

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/08/snack...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/swedish-father...

Consider the possibility that maybe men just don't want to stay home as much as women, even if it's acceptable.

For anyone in a competitive work environment who wants to get ahead, though, it's not surprising that someone would feel pressure to take less time off even if they had a very supportive employer. It seems kind of obvious to me that I would feel less "behind" in work if I took 4 weeks off instead of 8.

Most men don't sleep with other men, but that is again not considered abnormal or socialhttp unacceptable.

In computer-type jobs it's normal for men to take plenty of parental leave, and no stigma. Many work reduced work weeks too, right up until the youngest kid is 8 years old.

I know builders and such who do the same. And I've seen a few young female builders around too.

So I'm racking my brains trying to think what type of people in what type of job can be skewing the statistics.

Sweden is not a prejudice free country, but it's way better than Britian and, from the awful impression I've got from many short visits, the US.

Presently the best we can say from the data is that men seem to take close to the bare minimum of required time off, so it makes sense to increase that time if the goal is men spending more time with the newborn and/or supporting their partner.

Another conclusion may be that while it it /legally/ acceptable, it is not yet socially acceptable.

Finally, maybe an alternative to that approach would be better. Something like a year where both parents are /required/ to be home taking care of the baby.

It may not surprise you that I would prefer to make my own choices.

That does indeed make parents incapable of making family decisions.

Your mistake is in assuming that the legislation targets individuals.

It doesn't. It targets corporations that take advantage of individuals.

Legislation does target individuals; it forbids me from choosing money over time. As a person with no desire to stay home for long periods, this directly harms me.

Right, and find a job with completely different terms, which, uh, very likely doesn't exist.

This kind of "everything's a choice" BS really bugs me. There are plenty of situations where regulation is the only solution, and I suspect this is one of them. Since employers use willingness to work long hours as a signal of commitment/productivity, very few people get the choice to work shorter hours, even if almost everybody would be happier that way.

That solves the problem (?) that men spend less time with the newborn, but I have my doubts that it solves discrimination problems. Employers would just start hiring people who are less likely to have children (big data will make that even easier) and discourage their employees from getting families and thus children. Now the discrimination is just shifted around instead of removed, and on top of that it decreases the already low birth rate.

The point wasn't the example of paternity leave anyhow. The point is that some kind of leveling would need to happen if we want to equalize on some rational form of discrimination.

I highly recommend Misbehaving by Richard Thaler, particularly the chapter of the American football draft in this instance.

Outside of some limited cases, such as small groups of economists, there is no evidence that anyone, anywhere, had behaved 'rationally'.

In that case you might find that upper class women in their 30s are indeed more likely to leave the workforce than single men in their 20s, but less likely than men in their 50s. At that point, the "economically rational" argument becomes to only hire single men in their 20s, which I guess is what Silicon Valley does.

I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws. They probably worked better for manual labor and other commodity jobs. A compromise would be to limit them to these kinds of jobs.

Some men are married.

You almost quoted him.

No discrimination necessary. Every job has bullshit for everyone. An engineer friend got a new boss she doesnt like and her project manager job is stressful, and not what she likes (engineering), but the only way up the career ladder. She now thinks about getting kids as a way out.

As if men don't have this problem...

But to me the problem is companies working employees too long. Salary before meant putting in your 9-5 and leaving early on Fridays. Now if I don't put in 12 hours a day I look bad. If I do I look average.

This choice is not gender neutral, we can see clear differences - and this shows up in all kinds of places, choice of profession being one of them; taking time off for family - another.

And yet hiring managers (of all genders) continue to suffer from this bias. I've always just chalked it up to an excuse for sexism.

If the wage gap is happening and is really so drastic, if women are being undervalued so hard, etc, then there should be a massive Moneyball-style opportunity for people to start companies that correct this error. With the advantages you'd gain by adjusting hiring, you'd completely trounce the competition.

This hasn't happened yet though. Either people are being slow to do it, or the wage situation is not as straightforward as it is being put in these arguments.

If you hire an all-female sales staff, and each employee is technically better in every way than average men, but your customers simply do not want to be sold to by women, then it doesn't matter how good the women are, how many extra skills they have that aren't priced into the market, you will fail.

That's the thing with systematic bias: it's systematic.

That all said, there is still a way to capture the moneyball-style giant pile of cash (and yes, I do believe it is there. There's one for black people too, and every group we think is less employable for certain jobs than white men):

You have to create a feminist company and a feminist market and spin them up simultaneously.

The reason this doesn't happen all the time is it's much harder to create a 2-sided market than a 1-sided one.

And frankly, due to the systemic nature of sexism, a 2-sided market probably isnt enought. You really need to create an n-sided market. You need suppliers and partners and sister companies and clients all on the same page, at least to the extent that your interface with those organizations is human-rich enough to permit sexism.

This is the same reason why anarchist (property-free) businesses have been hard to create, even though the fundamentals should be more efficient than a capitalist company. For it to work you need to spin up n-anarchist companies at once so they can feed off each other. Instead people try to create them one by one, so they fail. They are chewed up by the fundamentally antagonistic world around them... Same as pro-women organizations are.

It's a hard startup problem, but we are getting good at solving those. I wouldn't bet against this being solved within 20 years, at least in proof of concept.

I don't know that you can blame anything on "the fundamentally antagonistic world" since all businesses face a fundamentally antagonistic world and their goal is to overcome that.

One could certainly imagine a law firm matching their hiring practices to the prejudices of their clients, and having this actually be the rationally optimal strategy, i.e. the impact on customer relationships is larger than the inefficiency of rejecting many otherwise good candidates.

It would make sense if your lawyers roughly mirrored the demographics of your customers - having the same social values, regions, schools, hobbies, accents as your customers do. And customers of the expensive law firms are quite different from the general population.

Take software engineering instead as an example, you should be able to hire an all women team of top engineers by paying regular market salaries. There would be no downside and all upside if the gap between male and females of the same skill level is true.

To change the decision would require changing either the statistics or the assumption in reasoning.

A "perfectly rational AI" might also kill of disabled people as unproductive, but we as a society will need to introduce bounds and constraints and objectives in line with our human values.

Which is what governments usually do.

My main point is that sometimes discrimination is not economically irrational. If that's true, but we as a society think that these forms of discrimination are still bad, we need to come up with better, stronger solutions to make sure discrimination of this sort doesn't happen.

The "rationality" you are talking about is false rationality. It's rationalisation- an excuse that people tell themselves to justify their inability to give up on the prejudice they've been taught.

This is true in a strictly material sense but it may not be true from a social/cultural/identity perspective. Traditional masculine identity at its very core is about being the root of the tree: the one your family depends on. Today, fewer and fewer men are in that situation. There are countless articles out there about men's withdrawal from the workforce. More and more women are getting college degrees and the gap over men is growing. Women with a college degree rarely date, let alone marry, men without a degree.

I'll be the first to say I don't automatically want life to go back to the way it was in the 50's. I just can't claim that everybody benefits equally from the new world order. Honestly, I don't know what we as a society ought to do about men who have checked out because they feel that life has left them behind.

I have no idea to what extent that's true, but let's say it's 100% correct.

The obvious thing to do is to make sure as many men as women have degrees. Ideally, that would mean _all_ men (and therefore, all women).

Of course, we could equalise the numbers by making it so fewer women get degrees but that's retrograde and unproductive. Although it does seem to me that sometimes, that's what people are asking for, when they say "more and more women get degrees these days" like it was a bad thing.

>> Honestly, I don't know what we as a society ought to do about men who have checked out because they feel that life has left them behind.

Make sure they get an education every bit as good as that available to men from more privileged backgrounds and create the environment and the opportunities for them to have a fulfilling and rewarding working life.

There are still quite a few very important jobs out there which do not​ need a degree (such as the trades). There are also lots of men who don't want to spend the time or the money on a degree, especially if they can get one of these jobs.

For various reasons, women aren't going for these jobs much at all. Women, moreso than men, seem to operate on the basis that a degree is the only path to a successful life.

Overall, it just seems like large numbers of women and men have inadvertently decided to go their separate ways. I don't know what the end result of this will be, but it sure seems lonely to me.

The fact that there was such a large, significant difference between high status men and low status men, but on the other hand low status women had 5 times the callbacks of low status men, strongly suggests you are incorrect.

There is a lot of handwaving here.

>Women benefit, because duh,

Certainly on one specific variable it's an improvement, but is it a benefit, all things considered? One of the things I find interesting about this is: I don't want to work at a white shoe law firm! I have no desire for 90-hr weeks, suffering culture, etc. And in general, women don't either. Can you blame them?

"But I'm not talking about forcing them, just offering them the choice. They don't have to take it." Absolutely true, and in general they've decided: hell no. "But that's because of discrimination..." which occurs because of that choice. How do you impose economic equality and freedom of choice if people make different choices?

White shoe law firms aren't happy with this: they'd keep employees locked in forever if they could. Maybe they have some horrible nightmare good reason for this that makes it work for them, I'm not a white shoe law firm. But the way they function apparently requires high-class workaholics. As long as that that's true, you will find difference ("equity" is a retarded and reductive concept. Men and women will only ever be equal if you see them as income numbers rather than men and women. I weigh 165 pounds. Am I equal with a 165-lb weight? How about a 165-lb version of me that doesn't know how to program and went into sales instead?).

>men benefit because their female relatives don't depend on them,

Imagine a world where no one depends on Google. Does Google benefit? This obviously has some troubling connotations and it's a more complex situation, but that's exactly my point. You're handwaving like this is elementary arithmetic ("Does the number on one income statement match the other?"), and oh it's so obvious what the real rationality is, how do these sexists talk themselves into these contrived beliefs, when you're dealing with complex phenomena.

Not all is well at prestigious law firms. Not all is well in the tech sector. But they will only get worse if you add reductionist thinking to the mix.

The OP was arguing that women have a lower expected work output over their career at a company, which is why "economically rational" was used.

So the employers would technically be better off hiring a male over a female with the same skills.

I was disagreeing with that on the basis that only looking at your bottom line when trying to decide what is "economically rational" is short-termist and self-defeating, because everyone benefits from living in a society where women have the opportunity to be as productive as men- and that includes employers who don't have to look at the gender of candidates to make a decision.

The benefits may be harder to measure, but that's why rationality is required, rather than rationalisation of unjustifiable bias ("women have lower expected work output").

The genuinely rational thing to do is to try and ensure that both women and men are equally productive, as workers.

If you want law firms to make their hiring decisions differently, then you have to change the incentives and rules that apply to them, not make false claims that they're being irrational.

Being a churn-and-burn testosterone fest is starting to look like it might have some negative long term consequences.

We're finally deciding as a society that this sort of discrimination is bad, so we need to provide an economic incentive to make it a rational choice for the company to equally weigh a man and woman.

Additionally, businesses get money from the state to pay the wages of their employers on maternity leave, and I think (hope) they do the same for fathers.

I believe other European countries also have similar arrangements in place.

"Statistically insignificant" means just that - this data is not sufficient to conclusively say if lower class women receive less callbacks than lower class men; maybe they do, maybe they don't.