Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#411

Post by kofejnik » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #330

stakhanov wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I object to the use of "dominated". In a herd, a "dominant" animal will actively work to keep others away from food sources and mating opportunities when those are scarce. This is not what this is. Strictly my opinion: There are few women in software engineering because few women WANT to be in software engineering, period. ...and it's not a given that this is by definition a bad thing for them either.

Maybe one of the reasons women do not want to work in IT is, that the atmosphere is still sometimes sexist? Or at least arkward. When I started to study IT, I was surprised to see, that the stereotypes were the majority. Meaning, long, oily hair, etc. So I guess that is still changing, and I really do not believe 50% women should be the goal, but maybe the IT world still needs reflection sometimes, why so little wome…

What’s wrong with long oily hair? Are you judging engineers by their appearance? And somehow you find _them_ sexist?

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#412

Post by jakelazaroff » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

zahrc wrote: post #314

adrianN wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for similar reasons like it generally being seen as a good thing to give free food and housing to the poor, but frowned upon to do the same for the rich.

I have trouble to understand your message behind your analogy... From what I get is that you are referring to woman as the poor, and man as the rich. Just because it's a man dominated field, does it mean the others remaining have no chance to get anything in that field? If so, do you suggest that one half of the world is not allowed to have these jobs at the same condition because some people already do, just because…

> Just because it's a man dominated field, does it mean the others remaining have no chance to get anything in that field?

Maybe women have less of a chance to get something in that field because employers are specifically excluding them from their job ad targeting?

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#413

Post by wolco » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #330

stakhanov wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I object to the use of "dominated". In a herd, a "dominant" animal will actively work to keep others away from food sources and mating opportunities when those are scarce. This is not what this is. Strictly my opinion: There are few women in software engineering because few women WANT to be in software engineering, period. ...and it's not a given that this is by definition a bad thing for them either.

Maybe one of the reasons women do not want to work in IT is, that the atmosphere is still sometimes sexist? Or at least arkward. When I started to study IT, I was surprised to see, that the stereotypes were the majority. Meaning, long, oily hair, etc. So I guess that is still changing, and I really do not believe 50% women should be the goal, but maybe the IT world still needs reflection sometimes, why so little wome…

So you didn't want to enter IT because the men had long oily hair in your clasz?

Hmm, this is a reason I never heard of. Honestly I haven't come across many men with long hair in 20 years.

Do you think this might be regional? Are there a lot of men with long hair in your area? Perhaps moving countries might help.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#414

Post by wolco » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

lovetocode wrote: post #372

repolfx wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many firms don't offer maternity leave? Outside of tiny 5 person startups that don't have any HR policies at all that seems like a strawman. As for men making condescending comments towards women, that's not a systematic problem with a systematic solution. And women (or really, feminists) pretty routinely make condescending comments towards men in my experience, at a much, much greater rate. The idea that women f…

The largest employer in the United States does not offer paid maternity leave — the U.S. Government. My wife whom is a federal employee did not receive maternity leave. Instead she was forced to use two years of forwarded sick leave.

Why isn't it a law like everywhere else in the world. In Canada men and women get maternity leave at the country level. Why put this in the hands of employers? or on the backs of a 5 person company?

Seems like things are setup to fail.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#415

Post by lovetocode » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #401

lovetocode wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest employer in the United States does not offer paid maternity leave — the U.S. Government. My wife whom is a federal employee did not receive maternity leave. Instead she was forced to use two years of forwarded sick leave.

I didn't know that! Thanks. I wonder why that's the case. Is that normal in the States?

It blew my mind too. No it isn't normal at all in the states which is why I found it so unbelievable until I researched it. All of my commercial employers offered paid maternity and paternity leave. There are movements now for passing legislation to get federal employees paid maternity leave but nothing has come of it yet from what I understand.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#416

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #409

lovetocode wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awkward for you maybe. If women don’t want careers in IT because it is filled with socially awkward men then whose fault is it really?

There is ample evidence that women were pushed out of IT. Educate yourself. Edit: citation https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/10/how-the-tech...

[deleted]

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#417

Post by neilv » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

eanthy wrote: post #405

neilv wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you conclude that the cause is "natural interest"? I've heard a number of other theories that also sound plausible, and they sound like problems that should be addressed. Examples of other theories (not exhaustive): alienated by brogrammer/strutting/aggressive culture many places, discriminated against in hiring many places, harassed by some individuals, not trying due to belief that they'll be discriminated a…

what you said can be applied to literally any job. Not a valid point when it comes to tech in particular

Many tech organizations talk a lot about culture, put effort into cultivating culture, develop their own hiring processes unique to tech, etc.

There are also, for whatever reason, differences of employee distribution across gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic, etc.

I think it's reasonable to suspect that tech organizations overall would tend to have different hiring practices, cultures, and distributions of individual behavior than organizations in other fields overall.

I don't know the research on this, but there's a lot of grassroots talk that they do.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#418

Post by pnutjam » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

eanthy wrote: post #405

neilv wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you conclude that the cause is "natural interest"? I've heard a number of other theories that also sound plausible, and they sound like problems that should be addressed. Examples of other theories (not exhaustive): alienated by brogrammer/strutting/aggressive culture many places, discriminated against in hiring many places, harassed by some individuals, not trying due to belief that they'll be discriminated a…

what you said can be applied to literally any job. Not a valid point when it comes to tech in particular

If it can be applied to any job, why is it unfair to apply it to tech.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#419

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

stakhanov wrote: post #290

There are job boards that SPECIFICALLY make it their business to target women and deliver female candidates looking for tech roles (in organizations that are in need of diversity hires): https://powertofly.com/ ...and companies pay a premium for those job advertising channels. Why is it a great business and an initiative to be applauded if it is about excluding men and a scandal if it is about excluding women?

Sex is a federally protected class[1]. Discrimination in employment decisions based on any federally protected class is illegal, and can carry rather large fines.

Using a job board that explicitly discriminates based on a protected class is a very, very risky idea. If a member of the untargeted portion of the class (a male) sees a job ad there and is denied employment they have very good evidence for a sex discrimination lawsuit.

[1] https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/Ibb0a38daef0511e28...

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#420

Post by pdub123 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #406

Angostura wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it a great business and an initiative to be applauded if it is about excluding men and a scandal if it is about excluding women? Because the one aims to reduce an imbalance in the workforce, which leads to a particular section being under represented. Thwe other aims to increase an imbalance in the workforce, which leads to a particular section being under represented.

Why do we think the imbalance is bad?

It's not, it's actually natural.

Presenting it as bad is simply, at worst: propaganda espoused by sheep and their shepherds, and at best: ignornace.

There has been a ton of research done on "Thing vs People" career interests, which show very clearly that men prefer working with Things, whereas Women prefer working with People.

(When I say prefer, I mean the average in a normal distribution)

Simply google: occupational interests people vs things

Ex1: "Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests"

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Ex2: "Straight Talk About Sex Differences in Occupational Choices and Work-Family Tradeoffs"

"Sex differences in occupational interests have been known for decades, and a recent aggregate analysis of the interests of more than 500,000 people shows that some of these differences are quite large.1 The most relevant finding here is that about 15% of women have the same level of interest in engineering as the average man; 50% of men, by definition, would have stronger interests in engineering than the average man."

https://ifstudies.org/blog/straight-talk-about-sex-differenc...

Ex3: "Brainwash: The Gender Equality Paradox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE