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Are gender quotas good for business?

economist.com

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#13
post #8

I’ve always said to hire the people who can do what we need as a business, regardless of their gender

Which is a noble sentiment but simply doesn't happen in the business world (or in many other places). So the hard question is, how do you effectively encourage business to choose the best people regardless of gender? Some have tried blind interviews but these are very hard to do properly and effectively. A 40% quota is another way to push business into looking beyond gender.

Then a minority-only company should be both cheaper and more productive, by supply and demand.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#14
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

With respect, I think what you just wrote is statistical nonsense. If your ultimate selection from a pool is heavily biased towards an irrelevant fact (gender) then countering that bias can lead to a better selection.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#15
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

One problem with this reasoning is that it assumes one can assign a fitness function to each single employee in isolation, independent of their different roles and how they relate to each other.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#16
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

Humans are not numbers. If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company.

There are plenty of numbers associated with humans in workforce. For example, their salary.

> If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company.

I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#17
I remember 2nd term math lecture. There were students from different engineering disciplines. There were 600 students with ~15 females among them.

Some years later situation is no different: ~100 people on the floor, 5 females here: 2 secretaries, 2 export specialists and senior researcher with PhD degree.

Where find suitable candidates for these quotes when women avoid technical stuff at university level?

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#18
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

How are you supposed to choose a candidate without filtering by any criteria?

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#19
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

The counter argument is that in practice, the true fitness function is only very roughly approximated by the selection heuristics used. And if - consciously or otherwise - $ismale happens to be weighted positively in the selection heuristic (more so than any positive effect maleness might actually have on their performance in the job), a quota which artificially inflates the number of females might actually go some way towards redressing that mismatch.

Obviously this is considerably more likely to actually be the case in some businesses and industries than others.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#20
post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

What very confident nonsense!

Individual fitness is not independent, let alone group fitness. And without independence you are just plain wrong.

Sociology dressed up as a priori mathematics is rarely credible. Even worse if the math simply isn't correct.

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