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

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

#421

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

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?

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole.

Besides, inclusive and diverse workforces have been repeatedly shown to be better for the bottom line because organizations are more able to serve a wider market when they are made up people more representative of the total market.

Revenue for the division I work in at my current employer exploded when we started hiring people outside of the traditional avenue for new hires. Until a couple of years ago we had been staffed by traditional government/military-focused scientists and engineers with narrowly-focused aerospace engineering backgrounds. Our customer base was 100% domestic government/military because that's who we knew and had relationships with. Outside consultants recommended non-"traditional" hires, and we followed their recommendations.

New hires in the environmental sciences (mainly women) and personnel with foreign language experience opened up market opportunities that we had been unable to see before and by diversifying our workforce we were able to diversify our customer base to include foreign environmental management organizations, agricultural, and natural resource-based markets.

My employer develops and sells a pretty unique Synthetic Aperture Radar system with capabilities not found in competing platforms. We had been trickling out systems to the Navy and Air Force on a onesy-twosy basis every year.

People with a diverse background said "hey we can sell this to oil and gas companies, departments of agriculture and environmental science all over the world, and we can work with all of these universities on terrestrial surveying projects and make more money".

And we did.

I imagine for mass-market consumer products and services the impact of understanding the needs of the market by having a workforce representative of the market as a whole would be even greater than what we experienced.

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

#422

Post by pdub123 »

raxxorrax wrote: post #381
hutzlibu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Women don't study IT because they dislike the grooming habits of their peers? And that is the fault of those icky nerds themselves? Because their hair is evidence of sexism? This is hilarious. I don't know if it is more insulting to nerds or to women, but I somehow like it. Seriously, I don't even know how to begin here...

It's simply propaganda.

It's the concept that women have no agency. That other people are responsible for the choices of individual women.

Check out my other post on this thread-- I show three different investigations into the reality:

Regarding occupational interests:

Men prefer working with things, women prefer working with people

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

#423

Post by Angostura »

pdub123 wrote: post #420
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: occupationa…

Exactly what proportion of the gender imbalance is accounted for by a "Thing vs People" disparity, according to those studies?

Is it only a question of sex-related disposition? If so, what has caused disposition to change so radically over the last 30 years?

And why, for example where over 50% of nurses men in the 1900s in the US, but it is now only around 7%? What caused men to apparently become so much less interested in people over the last 100 years, starting to become more interested in people again in the last 10?

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

#424

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #421
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we think the imbalance is bad?

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole. Besides, inclusive and diverse workforces have been repeatedly shown to be better for the bottom line because organizations are more able to serve a wider market when they are made up people more representative of the total market. Revenue for the division I work in at my current employer ex…

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole.

But why?

I understand the point that diverse workforce leads to diverse ideas. But will fifty women per hundred employees produce five times more diverse ideas than, say, ten women?

Hiring women just for the sake of hiring women looks like a cargo cult.

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

#425

Post by pdub123 »

Angostura wrote: post #423
pdub123 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: occupationa…

Exactly what proportion of the gender imbalance is accounted for by a "Thing vs People" disparity, according to those studies? Is it only a question of sex-related disposition? If so, what has caused disposition to change so radically over the last 30 years? And why, for example where over 50% of nurses men in the 1900s in the US, but it is now only around 7%? What caused men to apparently become so much less interes…

Gender Imbalance is a presupposition -- it begins from the place that a "gender imbalance" exists.

I can't justify for you your presupposition [nor demonstrate the existence of your chosen, yet unjustified presupposition given the evidence], you'll need to do that for yourself. Sounds like the news & entertainment media told you something repeatedly (without evidence), and you accepted it on its face without critical analysis.

Now, like many, when presented with evidence, you feel a sense of cognitive dissonance and would prefer to refute clear evidence rather than adjust your public opinion-- as to be expected given human nature of desire to save face.

However, what is apparently demonstrated in the studies is that the vast majority of individuals in a normal distribution favor a particular occupational set of interests based on gender: Men -> Things/Systems. Women -> People.

"The most relevant finding here is that about 15% of women have the same level of interest in engineering as the average (Read: 50% i.e. 50th percentile) man;"

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

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

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

#426

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

pdub123 wrote: post #420
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: occupationa…

I don't know for sure whether it's natural or not, but I keep wondering: imagine someone runs a groundbreaking research which eliminates all the possible biases and digs to the root of the issue. And it turns out the difference is natural Is any member of our corporation diversity board going to apologize then?

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

#427

Post by novaleaf »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #424
kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole. Besides, inclusive and diverse workforces have been repeatedly shown to be better for the bottom line because organizations are more able to serve a wider market when they are made up people more representative of the total market. Revenue for the division I work in at my current employer ex…

Imbalance is bad because participation in civil society, to include employment, should be representative of society as a whole. But why? I understand the point that diverse workforce leads to diverse ideas. But will fifty women per hundred employees produce five times more diverse ideas than, say, ten women? Hiring women just for the sake of hiring women looks like a cargo cult.

I agree that "increase diversity" is a rather obtuse meta argument, and using it implicitly argues that there are not other significant discrimination issues facing these groups. Maybe it is a better argument to make in certain settings though. For example, a company wouldn't want to admit to having discriminatory biases in hiring, so "increase diversity" is a much more palatable objective.

The more honest, less PR answer is that people still discriminate on huge range of factors. Race and Gender are just the most obvious and egregious.

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

#428

Post by captainredbeard »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #419
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 discrimina…

Unfortunately, the Department of Justice chooses to not enforce this law when the offending objective is to hire anything but white males. It should be enforced equally.

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

#429

Post by stakhanov »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #419
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 discrimina…

The next time I (male) am looking for a job, I will make a specific point of seeking out job advertisements targeted at women in tech and applying, just to see what happens.

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

#430

Post by geebee »

undefined3840 wrote: post #80

The dirty secret of hiring is that employers are always thinking about cost, but how many employees out there think of themselves as a cost to a bottom line? Not many. The most exploitable tech workers are young, single, males on H1-b visas. They will take a low salary and essentially be enslaved to their job because getting fired means getting kicked out of the country. Old workers and women are more “expensive” bec…

On a related note, you've nailed a big problem I have with encouraging women to go into IT. How I can I enthusiastically recommend this field for women when I have reservations about recommending it to anyone? The reasons I'd be hesitant to encourage my daughter to go into IT are largely the same reasons I'd be hesitant to encourage it for my son And the remaining reasons specific only to a woman may be present in every field, perhaps to a greater extent.

People compare nursing to software development, and by national numbers, yes, software pays more. But out here in San Francisco, ground zero for the "shortage" of software engineers (so grave that apparently it imperils the entire US economy and national security), an application developer, until very recently (like, last couple of years, according to BLS stats), earned less than a registered nurse. Here are the latest numbers.

Software developer (San Francisco): ~147k/yr https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...

Registered nurse (San Francisco): ~140k/yr https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/...

The data is a bit hard to parse, because here are specialties of programmer and nurse that pay more, and less, than these numbers (nurse anesthetist, for example, earn much more). There are variable pay issues to consider - tech workers may have options, but then again, nurses who work for government or university hospitals often have very good pension packages (the kind that were once commonplace but are now extinct in the private sector). And UCSF fired a bunch of IT workers after telling them to train their H1B replacements, try that on the nurse's union (seriously, see what happens). I think that things like maternity leave are probably better in nursing as well.

In any case, while it isn't clear that nursing is necessarily a better field, it is absolutely not clear, in any way, that it's a worse choice from a financial and career/job stability.

Tech goes through this on a pretty regular cycle. The CEOs ask the market what it costs to get talented people who would like to do something meaningful with their life what kind of salary they'd need to agree to work on photo sharing apps in a giant open office in a place where a crappy 2 br house runs well above a million. It turns out people with options kinda prefer other options, like, say becoming a nurse practitioner. The market answers, the CEOs don't like it, so they have the government ask again on their behalf. The government responds by granting these CEOs and their HR departments control over a shadow immigration system, where they get to decide who does and doesn't get to live in the uS and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain here. Those conditions, it turns out often involve being a developer in the valley - because that's what the country needs, right?

Meanwhile, the people with the right to choose a career path consistent with their interests, life ambitions, and financial needs (what we call the "free folk", those who either inherited citizenship at birth, have a relative here, purchased it through various investments, or earned it through 7-10 years of employment at a tech company that sponsors and controls their green card application) often decide that they'd rather do something else. I'm hardly going to discourage someone with free choice from choosing an different option, especially when so many of those other options provide meaningful and fulfilling work at reasonable salaries (and don't involve tech interview tests or open offices).

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