Let's review the facts.
Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2...
[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/engineering-...
What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem https://www.wired.com/2014/08/silicon-valley-sexism/
https://blog.hackerrank.com/which-countries-have-the-most-sk...
The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
While hiring in America must provide equal opportunities, there is no requirement that American companies not discriminate when sponsoring visas.
Just because there are more women in engineering doesn't imply that there isn't a pay gap, or that they're assigned to tasks of equal urgency
Indian here, in India, and here are my anecdotal experiences in decade+ experience
1. Worked with a tech team of 10 with no females, for over 8 years. Manager hired one once HR pointed it out categorically to him. Even she didn't last. Super co-incidentally, she was in QA. I should mention that she wasn't the problem.
2. Worked with design teams in 3 companies, the ratio of females was never more than 2:8 with respect to males.
3. Newly married women generally find it really hard to get back into workforce since it is expected that they will soon be planning a child and hence require a paid maternity leave. HR is explicity told about this by management.
4. Even unmarried ones are usually asked about their marriage plans when getting interviewed.
I would like to add, there is a dearth of skilled talent too with respect to women. Along with the lot less opportunities available to women for higher education, lot many women in India only join workforce to get more qualified for arranged marriages - "having working life" is somehow always in demand, higher skills or salaries do not matter to suitors usually - it is usually expected in both families that males will likely earn more than females so much so that the ones looking for prospective brides do not go for ones earning more than the prospective groom - something that perhaps works as a motivation for some women to not to vie for higher compensation jobs. This of course ends up making them more dependent on their spouses for money matters.
Again, this is not a commentary on all women or all men either but just a perspective of someone on the ground, in India.
Broadly speaking, closer gender representation in STEM is positively correlated with sexist discrimination counterintuitive though it may seem: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
"women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And typically, that path leads through STEM professions."
But rather than listening to anecdotes, I'll listen to evidence, which also indicates that tech at best does not discriminate against women and likely discriminates in favor of them.
Wrong. 74% of women say they have experienced gender discrimination. This is not measuring discrimination, this is measuring perceptions of discrimination - which is a substantially different thing than actually measuring discrimination through things like anonymized applications, or sending identical applications with different genders. Imagine I had an orchestra. I poll them about gender discrimination, and loads more men say they experienced gender discrimination in hiring. But when we switch to blind auditions, men actually fared worse than women. Which is more compelling evidence?
Perceptions of discrimination could be caused by all sorts of things, like a media ecosystem fiercely promoting the idea that women are being discriminated against in tech - which doesn't always match reality. For instance, Google was constantly said to have been paying women less than men, until they actually studied their salary disparities and found men were underpaid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
However, you do raise a good point. The fact that so many women believe they are being discriminated against could very well be part of suppressed representation of women in STEM. The fact that perceptions of discrimination are so strong could dissuade women from entering the field, even though there's little evidence for actual discrimination in tech.
> That's some twisted logic there.
I prefer the term "counterintuitive". And the world works in ways, many of which are counterintuitive. Another famous example - poverty trap, where people are incentivized to stay poor when you offer them means tested welfare. While each of the pillars of such programs (means testing, helping poor etc) sound good in isolation, they have a devastating impact in practice. Moynihan (a liberal, fwiw) was skewered when he suggested as such.
Many fields that were once dominated by men are now either at parity, or even majority women. The fact that freedom from sexism stopped displacing women into CS doesn't seem like much of a bad thing.
Such a convenient explanation... CS is one of the highest paid professions, and women are taking advantage of lack-of-sexism and choosing to stay out of CS... because umm... they don't need the money? You should consider speaking at the Grace Hopper Conference, because there's lots of women there that haven't been told this truth.
As I stated in my previous comment, it's because other high paying industries stopped being sexist against women, and then the women that would have been pushed out of those industries and into CS can now study and work in the field of their choice. Nowhere did I write that "they don't need the money", and I even said that they were choosing other high paying fields once medicine, law, etc. stopped enforcing overtly sexist policies against women. Discussions are more productive when you engage with what other commenters are writing instead of your own inventions.
Obviously if a choice is starving vs CS, most women would prefer CS. That’s the choice for many women in Iran (most equal country in CS) or India. That’s not choice for most women in US or Europe. We are talking averages here - obviously there are a lot of women much more motivated by money than average men.
If I poll orchestra members and a lot more men say the face discrimination in hiring, but when I conduct blind auditions men do even worse what does that tell me? Or tells me that their perceptions of discrimination are out of line with the reality of discrimination.
If Indian companies have incentives to keep them in-house, that simple structural difference would completley chaange the numbers.
I'm not sure we havr "facts" (numbers) that are immune to these discrepancies.
I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no...
> As India transforms, one might expect caste to dissolve and disappear, but that is not happening. Instead, caste is making its presence felt in ways similar to race in modern America: less important now in jobs and education, but vibrantly alive when it comes to two significant societal markers — marriage and politics…
> Inter-caste marriages in India are on the rise but still tend to be the province of the liberal few. For much of the country, with its penchant for arranged marriages and close family ties, caste is still a primary determinant in choosing a spouse…
…and a bit more. Why do you believe caste discrimination isn’t real? That seems like a strong stance.
Why you might find people being defensive on this thread is that it might feel galling to be talked down to by Americans on this subject. The Indians on this thread, like me, have never thought about caste and yet they’re being told to stop being casteist, to fight casteism etc by people who found out about it 10 minutes ago. For others, being told about casteism makes them feel bad because it’s a reminder that India isn’t as great as it could be, it’s not the land of equality and opportunity that we’d like to believe it is.
Not saying they’re right to feel that way, because we must do our part regardless of what others say. But it just gives you their perspective, so you might understand.
yet, right ?
Just so many Indians in the US makes this evident to me
Anyway, nobody likes others shiting on their country, but no need to gaslight or minimize
> "the vast majority of high paying jobs are still in the hands of the top three castes."
That's how a lot of us Indians feel when Americans talk about caste discrimination.
Yes, it is absolutely real.
No, you probably don't understand at all how it works. It is kind of darkly hilarious to me that a comment from some guy saying "There are lots of Indians in Seattle, and they seem to stick together. I really don't know about the dynamics of the caste system..." is the second most upvoted comment on this discussion.
Yes, it is exhausting for us to teach you about thousands of years of history and how they contributed to discrimination. Go read up a few history books if you really want to know.
The main issue is that a good chuck of tech folks upvoting and making this a big don't want to understand. They want to use this as an issue to not let Indians get promoted to managerial positions instead of them. It becomes easier now to say "hey, Indians are casteist, don't make them a managers'.
It's similar to how there is always mass confusion around here for the requirements for scouting for local applicants for work visas vs green card applications.
They don't seem to be looking for facts, that's why the discussions are so strange with real experiences downvoted, and some vague notions of high rates of caste discrimination in the US are upvoted.
I am honestly not sure why Indians would not become managers. A lot of Indian managers have existed in the companies I've been at.
Well, I am trying – what about you?
Go add some more history sources to mine in the comment below that's asking for them!
where do you see caste discrimination show up ?
His writings are mostly in English and present a deep study of the subject, especially given that it affected him personally.
----------------------------------------
Reservations are not equivalent to affirmative action in America. Dr. Ambedkar was the Chairman of Constitutional Drafting Committee. In popular imagination, he is often called the author of the Indian constitution. Reservations are a small part of it.
> He was the Indian equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King.
I understand that you are trying to make the context relatable to an American audience but I find this framing rather grating. I don't mean any disrespect to Dr. King but this is selling Dr. Ambedkar short.
This is not politics or history, or even western thinking. It is fundamentally unfair and unjust. Treat others as you would like to be treated. This concept of justice is not foreign to any country or belief system as far as I am aware, please correct me if I am mistaken here. But every culture has ways and means by which laws, norms and traditions have been established that subvet the most basic senses of justice anyone can have.
I do not need to understand the history between tutsi and hutu in rwanda or serbs and bosnians or native and white americans in latin america or black and white people in the US.
Again I ask, unless you are arguing to justify the injustice, why is the reason behind it unjust?
I would say that I personally don't think any generalizations about "indians in seattle" or elsewhere is correct but individual experiences are not to be ignored either.
I don't see why HR and EEOC won't treat this like any other type of discrimination.
Matter of fact, I don't think seattle should need to ban caste discrimination. It is already illegal at the federal level!
I get what you’re saying - it’s just discrimination like any other discrimination and all discrimination is outlawed implicitly. I mostly agree. I just wouldn’t want this to become the first and only thing that people think about while trying to mediate relations between Indians.
Why would a European think an American would possess a gun in their country? And how would they get it there through customs - it’s not an idea? And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?
Sorry, I’ve spent a bit of time in Europe (including living for a stint). I’m also from a part of the US that has plenty of firearms. I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.
Yeah, you know how stuff works in Europe, so this transparently sounds like nonsense to you. Similarly, the OP's assertion that caste and sex discrimination is "rampant" among Indians in Seattle sounds like nonsense to me.
> And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?
Definitely, in a bad way. People have been murdered in India over inter-caste marriages.
> I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.
I'll try to explain it point by point:
- Caste-based discrimination is a terrible thing that happens all the time in India, similar to how gun violence is a terrible thing that happens all the time in the US.
- But if a European said to you "You Americans in my country are super argumentative! You seem to be ready to pull a gun on each other all the time against each other, it's just like what I read in the paper!", you'd think it was nonsense that was basically stereotype-matching.
- Similarly, I find OP's comment about rampant caste discrimination nonsensical because it relies on simplistic stereotyping.
You are also not obliged to teach people anything, but as you've seen the people will judge you based on the information presented. Not contributing to the narrative only leads people to base judgement on the supplied information.
Most of us in the West never wanted anything to do with caste! This is a uniquely Indian problem which requires Indian efforts to fix, this isn’t something that can be passed off to western social justice movements to solve for you.
I don't pass off racism or gun violence as "a uniquely European problem which requires European efforts to fix". I study the nuances and try to help where I can.
You should think about doing the same.
It makes for uninteresting discussion of the misgivings of different countries when the first thing you're able to reach for is "well what about colonialism?"
It's mainly meant as an illustration of the OP's "We never wanted Problem X, take it back to your country!" argument, which is simplistic and uninteresting.
It seems that it’s an older generation thing. The younger ones don’t care about caste at all but if their parents ask about their friends they will lie, because their parents care a lot about caste.
And while caste is illegal in India. It’s such a big country it’s difficult to enforce. So it’s still rampant outside of the big cities.
I used to donate to a charity which builds wells in India for small villages to ensure they have safe clean drinking water. They supply the materials but everyone in the village must contribute to building it and everyone must have access regardless of caste. If the village does not agree they won’t help.
I can’t remember what the charity was called :(
The caste system was outlawed ages ago. It very much is illegal.
What exactly do you think is outlawed?
There is more to the story and that's a good read, but in practice you can see cast discrimination still a lot in India, as I figured out recently when I have been a few weeks in the country.
> The caste system was outlawed ages ago. It very much is illegal.
As you'll note, the actual prohibition is on a narrow class of discrimination. That is what I was trying to emphasize. I live in India and am very much aware of the discrimination that still exists.
I never said it wasn't still practiced. Just that its much more observed outside of the big cities than in it.
What others have been trying to explain to you is that only caste-based discrimination was banned, not the caste system itself.
Because they go on to say that the ban hasn't been very effective, you seem to miss that first point and start arguing that you weren't saying discrimination doesn't exist, which isn't addressing the intention behind what they were saying.
I never said the caste system was abolished or doesn't exist. And I never mentioned 'untouchables'. It seems those replying and refuting anything I say are in favor of the caste system and want to keep it, which is utterly horrible.
If you cannot discriminate against caste, the caste serves no purpose, because you're effectively saying people are equal. But writing anti descrimination laws into the constitution obviously doesn't help society move away from it, especially when its so engrained into elders, or people who live outside the big cities.
You literally said:
> The caste system was outlawed ages ago.
> It seems those replying and refuting anything I say are in favor of the caste system and want to keep it
This is one hell of a take. How the fuck do you fix something if you keep pretending it's already fixed.
> If you cannot discriminate against caste,
There is no law criminalizing discrimination. People discriminate and face discrimination every single day.
> people who live outside the big cities.
I've lived in the third and fourth largest cities in India and seen discrimination with my eyes.
In my last comment I said exactly that. Being outlawed does not mean it’s abolished. Something can be illegal and people still do it. People still commit murder and that’s been outlawed for like ever. So it can’t have been abolished if it still exists.
> How the fuck do you fix something if you keep pretending it's already fixed.
At no point did I say it’s a solved problem. My very first comment I said it happens outside the big cities more than the big cities. I never said it doesn’t happen.
You know. I heard a saying once: “people outside America know more about America than Americans know about America” it seems like the same is true here.
Check this out! https://a.co/d/b55ZoJ9
Check this out! https://a.co/d/b55ZoJ9
After the British came the caste system got worse. They used the caste system in their government and caused a lot of people to get upset.
We could literally blame all of India’s current caste issues on the British.
The government should be demolishing the caste system entirely based on the little I know from the people I’ve spoken to. It causes more harm than good. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is outlawed.
I don't think this is a fair characterisation. I have never heard of anyone wanting to stop this. If you mean CRT, that is something different, or at least the versions of it that are causing pushback are different.
More broadly, books like Lies my Teacher Told Me have pointed to the long history of numerous failings of our history curriculum.
We never got to be anywhere near the slave quarters, and it was never once mentioned that dozens of black people were brutally slaughtered there with their heads put on pikes at the entrance.
There has never in the history of the United States been a curriculum containing CRT at the K-12 level because children don't have the background and capacity to understand it.
And by bringing it up at all, you're proving that you don't either.
Indian movies became almost unwatchable lately. It's getting more and more extreme.
This book will help you give some context though
How can I or anyone prove a negative? I can only offer my life experiences as a non-high caste Indian whose both sides of the family eat meat, that caste never ever comes up with any of my Indian coworkers, managers, friends or family. Nor has anyone ever mentioned to me that they experienced issues because of their caste. In rural India and among older folks caste is more important, but in America it's pretty rare for people to care about caste. Any discrimination must be dealt with, but I don't like the generalization on HN than Indians are casteist.
The initial example I gave was this: "caste discrimination exists". The response I see is "oh no that isn't real"
That's like someone saying "mass shootings occur in the USA" and me saying "no they don't"
A white person could say "racism is a thing of the past or is an issue somewhere else, because I don't experience it on a day to day basis". That's what your reply makes me think of. Of course, not all people of X demographic are racist or casteist. But this "hear no evil, speak no evil" mentality towards it isn't helping
You get it. This is exactly the fear I have -- that clueless Americans will use an "Indians are casteist" excuse to justify not hiring us to management or positions of power.
There are already "keep it in India" comments on these threads that are going unmoderated, which would be totally unacceptable in any other context.
I'd posit that forming an opinion based on what you read on Blind isn't going to be accurate let alone nuanced.
Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.
> but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues" ... I will probably be tight lipped in front of you
All OP said is their Indian colleagues are tight-lipped about caste, which it sounds like you would be too. I'm not sure why you feel that's unfair generalization. OP isn't claiming they all support it, just that they're silent about it.
OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
Shouldn't we be talking about it then? Openly? Educating others.
> I hate the caste system
This is where being tight lipped doesn't make sense. It falls under the "it's our problem so you can't talk about it". If it's a bad system then let it be just that, why defend it by not talking about it?
A similar analogy would be police doing brutal/illegal things and defending each other. If you're a cop and you hate that, then being tight lipped about the "internal problems and complexities" only keeps the problems going.
> All women in QA. So what ?... Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races. Sure maybe saying casteism is the root cause is too much, but denying it is also wrong. It's like saying racism is never a factor. It's not 100% the factor, but it's definitely a portion of a problem.
I guess... we should talk about it and learn - and not be afraid.
I agree with everything you said, but just a note that OP was talking about sex and caste discrimination as separate things, not conflating them as your parent implies.
From OP:
> The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa
> There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races
But it is flawed - it could be easily argued that this group of people are way more sexist than others which could account for that ratios being off vs inherently Caste.
OP is talking not just about casteism but also about sexism, and in the US this would be considered a badly sexist remark. Why do you assume that women seek jobs with a lower barrier to entry and less demanding work?
QA has ALL women is not same as All Women do QA.
Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a Scandinavian with no knowledge of this situation in India. I can only share what we have learned here, as I think it could help explain some of the reason why it ended up this way.
This could be an example of gender inequality. We had the same issue in our countries where the women chose jobs with lower barrier to entry with more dependability and stable work hours. The reason was that they had (and some still do) a lot of responsibilities outside work to take care of their family.
There was also a cultural thing where men didn't feel "manly" enough when they took time off work to take care of the children. The government provides a long maternal/paternal leave, and made an equal part of it reserved to men and women. That quickly changed the culture where it became more acceptable for men to take time off work to raise children.
It turned out that women actually wanted the same careers as men :-) The expectations from society made it hard for them, and when those expectations changed the pattern also changed.
Sure, we still have some types of work that are dominated by women, but it is increasingly their own choice. We are not finished yet, and there is still work to do, but the gap is closing.
From my experience, it seems that female developers in my country go through a different path. Instead of going to a lower entry job, they frequently start as regular developers and often end up as managers and other positions of influence.
It isn't a generalization to point out that there's something strange when the distribution is skewed that strongly considering that men and women are generally equal. Some slight bias is understandable, but the larger the deviation gets, the more unrealistic it is. There is nothing inherent about being a woman that would lead to them unanimously choosing to go with a lower barrier to entry and similarly there is nothing inherent about being a man that would lead to them not choosing said lower barrier and easier work.
I think it is distracting.
What we should talk about, and what we can talk about, is the inacceptable behavior of (some) people, in this case (some) Indians in the US work place.
So, every race other than Indians can't understand basic sentences.
"OP is making sweeping generalizations."
Wait.. didn't you just do that.
The ones from the higher castes (which are the most likely to be wealthy enough to come here) are the ones favored by the system and are more likely to approve of it.
I have no experience regarding Indian womens' attitudes.
What does it mean for something to be fractal in this sense?
There's a famous old joke about this problem, which goes as follows. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
A common example is women discriminating against women co-workers by gossiping and backstabbing them in the social aspect of the workplace. We may not see that it is discrimination (on the basis of gender) because it's women doing their thing.
In the Deaf community, we experience discrimination every day from those who are hearing. Then there is a big one against people who identify as "D" deaf [those who identify with the Deaf community as an identity] and those who identify as "d" deaf [those who identify as having an impairment]. Those within the deaf community additionally discriminate those who aren't "deaf" enough, and then in turn, even discriminate against deaf who are mentally handicapped.
In America companies, women who struggle to find software engineering roles due to discrimination are often able to get lower-paid roles in QA where they are less likely to be pre-judged for not looking like what people think engineers look like. The result is that 38.8% of American QA testers are women, compared to 14% of software engineers.
I wonder how much that has to do with the hiring managers also being women. (For the places where that’s the case.)
Fields that hold fixed-mindset beliefs, where success in the field is attributed to innate talent, "being smart" or other unchanging characteristics, have significantly more discrimination against women and traditionally-marginalized racial groups than do fields that believe success relies on hard work and practice: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375
To quote:
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Also, you wrote:
Nothing to do with casteism.
It is not casteism. It is cultural.
About "extremely reckless and dangerous": On HN, each time casteism is the topic, it evokes strong, emotionally defensive responses from Indian-descent people (both nationals and the diaspora). Something that I often see repeated: "Oh, you just don't understand." "Oh, you cannot understand this ${thing} in our ancient culture." It's hard to understand if you don't ask. Yes, you may perceive their asking as a slight, but in many cases they are making an effort to learn more about this complex social issue. I see similar reactions during discussions about transgender rights and Black Lives Matter _in the United States_. There seems to be a small, vocal minority that wants to deny these are real, very serious, and important social issues that need our attention.
When a non-Indian descent person sees what they perceive as casteism or sex discrimination towards Indian descent people, how would you like them to raise the issue with you?
Unless sitkack thumbed their comment into an iPhone while simultaneously driving drunk and having unprotected sex with a prostitute, "extremely reckless and dangerous" is an awfully weird commentary on their post.
You have to attack it at the root and get these people to change themselves, and that's basically also impossible.
But from a practical perspective all of this is already done and kept on the DL even before the law was in place. The social pressure already stops the blatant treatment from occurring.
We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. The book "Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds" describes several instance where this worked. Voluntary legal protection of minority rights by a historically-dominant group has repeatedly dismantled long-standing ethnic conflicts.
>We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them.
Sure but the point is, it will never be "not strategic".
It's up to us to be that countervailing social condemnation. Even imposing that cost of making up a totally different reason raises the cost of discrimination, and raising the cost of something means people will do it less.
But let's disregard that. For this specific case you can't even know who to socially condemn. If the law can't determine it how can you?
Of course they don't! People make their own choices!
My point was that QA teams are often more welcoming to women, and don't have a ton of male brogrammer "let's crush some LeetCode" types. This also tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Where would you rather go, the team that treats interviews as a hazing ritual, or the one that conducts a good conversation and respects your time?
I tried to make this more clear in my comment, since clearly I didn't do a good job of communicating it the first time.
The rest of your comment is fine but you can say it without throwing an entire country under the bus.
Guess what, the US is currently literally allowing for caste discrimination. So maybe it’s not better than this. Not yet.
India is not dealing with this issue, America is.
India is not dealing with caste discrimination? Is this a joke?
India has implemented incredibly wide-reaching and aggressive policies to both combat present-day casteism and remediate the effects of past/historical casteism.
Yes, caste discrimination still happens in India - that's why it remains an ongoing effort with a multi-pronged approach. But it's very much an issue that is actively being addressed at nearly every layer of society, to a degree that would be inconceivable in the US or Europe.
Honestly, if you compare the tangible and concrete steps to combat casteism that India has undertaken (a currently active effort) to the incredibly milquetoast anti-racism efforts within Europe (for example), it makes the latter look like mere lip service by comparison.
Lmao - clearly never been to india. Where do you think this comes from?
Dealing as in working on it, not dealing as in enduring.
That solution works in situations where performance is individual, the standards are largely agreed-upon and the access to training & opportunities are equally-accessible. That's why it was so effective for orchestras.
Unfortunately, computer science education remains one of the most discriminatory part of our industry, and the decades of discrimination mean people's resumes and post-education training vary already.
And finally, what makes a developer effective varies by team and context, and we don't have any consistent way to judge those things.
Luckily, there are plenty of techniques that can successfully address bias even under those situations. They just tend to be harder to sell to anxious people who want to stay centered in the majority, because they all require admitting that discrimination exists.
the problem is certain groups thrive on the American's lack of information about Indian society to spread their misinformation as truth. Caste, being a complex issue, has been reduced india to rural areas. Any cases about caste favoritism or discrimination area dealt with public outcry and government laws. Meritocracy is the currency in the new Indian tech space.
Caste as portrayed by American newspapers and "human rights" agencies is that every Hindu (they single out, even though caste problem exists in all religions in India Pakistan Bangladesh etc) comes with caste lense, which is untrue. There has been a deliberate attempt to make Brahim = white so that US left liberals can easily make oppressor-opressed connections. Reality is way different and complex but nobody wants to read sources. In many parts lower castes are in high power, and they exert atrocities on everyone else - other lower castes and higher castes. Whole India is riddled with examples like that. Person in power exploits poor person. Caste is just a tool. Again, with public outcry and strict laws, it has been relegated to deep rural areas of India. You won't find it easily in cities. What all this points to ? This is an attempt to dehumanize hindu population, attack hindu tech workers (who are micro minority in USA) and erode any goodwill around India.
Take this article for example, it doesn't go into the Dalit activists obvious misinterpretations but paints Rajiv Malhotra as devil incarnate. Propaganda pieces rarely show their teeth this easily. Any follower of reuters will form their opinion by reading such propaganda piece.
Salvatore Babones, american statistician warned about same thing -
Salvatore Babones | Demonising A Democracy? | India Today Conclave 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkFwDk7TUQ .
For a western audience, India is becoming a fascist state even though ground reality is entirely opposite because they are surrounded by media reports which say so. If you repeat lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
Newspeak™ terms like 'cis' should be kept out of the general discourse, they have no place in a society where people live and thrive based on what binds them together. This type of language only serves to divide and create more 'us versus them' which may be a boon for those who want to push identity politics but is a bane for the rest of society.
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad.
I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.
Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...