Re:ThinkGeek: The nerd company at a crossroads
by wpietri on Sunday December 15, 2013 @05:51PM
(#6911404)
Yes. There's a good study where the same resume was given to science faculty to rate, sometimes with a male name, sometimes female. When the resume had a female name, it was rated as less competent and deserving of a lower salary and less mentoring. Male and female professors displayed the same bias against the female resumes: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109
Re:ThinkGeek: The nerd company at a crossroads
by aestra on Sunday December 15, 2013 @09:00PM
(#6912263)
Studies like this have been repeated over and over again. This bias is well ingrained in culture. Another good one was a study where people where given a story about a successful person then asked to give adjectives to describe these people. When the person has a male name the adjectives were positive. Female names got negative adjectives.
The other interesting thing is since the 1970s orchestras have used blind auditions where the person auditioning is out of view. Since then females in orchestras have increased dramatically.
In this particular case: The people I have met and talked to were on the web programming side, not product development. Between their stories and my own experiences at other companies, companies that focus on Area Of Business X tend to be founded by experts in X, and have no clue what Y or Z are even there for. So if ThinkGeek were, say, founded by product developers, then IT would get the short end of the stick all the same as if it were founded by sales people.