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

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451–460 of 487 posts

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

#451

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...

This appears to discuss secretarial work like data entry which women weren't so much suited for as pushed into by limited options.

The fact that data entry was a female dominated profession because women were pushed into it and men discouraged from it doesn't serve to prove that current women are not able to work in the field.

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Aunt wrote computer code into her 60s. This was up until at most 10 years ago. She has a degree in math and went back to school after being a SAHM and got a degree in computer science from a community college, and banged out code for about 15 years. She coded circles around (and out-adulted) her younger colleagues.

> She coded circles around (and out-adulted) her younger colleagues. How would you ever know this?

She's not a boastful person and doesn't like talking about work, and we don't have much in common. But in an effort to bridge the gap, she would tell me about work. The few conversations we had about her job made me angry on her behalf for how much of the workload, and more importantly management responsibilities, she shouldered on behalf of the company for no increase in title or pay.

It was a small, family owned company that made medical software that was a little "fly by the seat of the pants" if you get my drift.

For the removal of doubt, I have worked as a computer programmer.

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This appears to discuss secretarial work like data entry which women weren't so much suited for as pushed into by limited options. The fact that data entry was a female dominated profession because women were pushed into it and men discouraged from it doesn't serve to prove that current women are not able to work in the field.

Ask me how I know you didn't read the article. It touches on that, but mostly talks about how women were seen as convenient because they were cheap. The conventional wisdom was also that women would leave when they got married or had kids, but as computers got more powerful; the old boys club decided they needed to own those jobs too.

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

#454
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you don't control if a man or an old person can buy the magazine or not.

While true, its a bit of a nitpick and misses the point GP made.

I think that's the main reason why buying an ad in Cosmo is different from buying a targeted Facebook ad in terms of discrimination. Cosmo might be written with women in mind but anybody can go and buy it. But it's pretty much impossible for someone who identifies as a man on Facebook to see ads that are only targeted towards women. The Facebook example is more similar to a real estate agent who only shows certain properties to white families.

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

#455
post #195

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> Is it biased in a bad way? Probably in several ways, along with a gender bias in your network there's probably a high likelihood that there's a racial bias, a class/wealth bias and an age bias. Your network probably has a strong contingent of people you went college with, people with a shared interested in your sports (which can be a proxy for class and race) and people with a similar background.

There's an awful lot of "yes but I..." going on in this thread, finishing with people not seeing their own bias, or not giving enough information to prove they don't have bias in their recommendations. Let me start by inverting something that Uncle Bob has been saying for years: If you have less than 5 years experience, then 50% of the developers out there are 'older' from your perspective. Are half of your recommend…

[deleted]

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

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to discuss secretarial work like data entry which women weren't so much suited for as pushed into by limited options. The fact that data entry was a female dominated profession because women were pushed into it and men discouraged from it doesn't serve to prove that current women are not able to work in the field.

Ask me how I know you didn't read the article. It touches on that, but mostly talks about how women were seen as convenient because they were cheap. The conventional wisdom was also that women would leave when they got married or had kids, but as computers got more powerful; the old boys club decided they needed to own those jobs too.

I read the article and still don't understand how women are really prevented from working in IT in the present day unless its mostly because many don't desire to.

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a female software developer, I would like to see those ads so I can get better jobs. If I don't even see the ads, then I would not even know about opportunity. Without opportunity, I cannot really progress. If only men see the ads, apply jobs and get interviews, then the employers may think that they shouldn't advertise to women. This is just circular thinking.

Not in the steel mill in my town: no woman ever applied in 50 years, why spend money on advertising to them? Nobody rejects female applicants (they don't reject practically anybody), but no woman wants to work there, they can barely find men. Same with any highway construction site: there is no woman in the entire country, the working conditions are too harsh. They accept anyone willing to work (there is much more de…

It's the law, and most jobs can be done by both sexes so there should be equal opportunity regardless of whether one group applies more often than the other.

It's not worth making exceptions on case-by-case basis for each industry and position, especially when the final outcome could very well be affected by the initial ads.

Also ad campaigns are always optimized and should naturally show more to demographics that are responsive as they are run.

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I bemoan the current form of identity politics because it allows an out. "I don't hate women, it's just disadvantageous to me to hire them," or, "I don't hate black people, I just won't rent to them because they statistically commit more crimes." And without an iota of malice in anyone's heart, relevant actors can reproduce the same exact disparities that perpetuate inequality. This is called systemic dis…

> This is why I bemoan the current form of identity politics because it allows an out. "I don't hate women, it's just disadvantageous to me to hire them," or, "I don't hate black people, I just won't rent to them because they statistically commit more crimes." That's direct discrimination, and I don't see how “the current form of identity politics” supposedly creates an “out” for it. Please elaborate.

Since the fading of the New Left, progressivism in general has increasingly turned away from their traditional causes which were rooted in economic concerns and more towards different kinds of social causes. Identity politics isn't the only thing, but it is a primary focus of the left today. Identitarianism was prominent in the New Left, but the one thing that exemplifies the left's use of it today is a decided move away from the systemic to the personal, concerning personal attitudes and how they effect inequalities in society, vs systems of oppression. It's not that the personal doesn't matter, but it is part of a whole; both society and the personal matter[0].

I want to use the N-word (neoliberalism) but that term is a little overused. I guess the better way to express it is a kind of recuperation of identity based issues to fit into the dominant individualist ideology in society (the N word fits here but avoiding it) like the personalization of sexism, racism, turning them from being systems of oppression to being mere personal attitudes.

[0] I like this Goldman quote, see the pulled quote on display on this page from _Anarchism: What It Really Stands For_ https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/index.htm

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

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask me how I know you didn't read the article. It touches on that, but mostly talks about how women were seen as convenient because they were cheap. The conventional wisdom was also that women would leave when they got married or had kids, but as computers got more powerful; the old boys club decided they needed to own those jobs too.

I read the article and still don't understand how women are really prevented from working in IT in the present day unless its mostly because many don't desire to.

Like hires like. It's incredibly difficult to be the odd one out.

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

#460
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't arbitrary judgment calls. There are laws. And sure, the existence of those laws might be arbitrary. But the laws themselves are specific.

I guess the poor guy did not ask about the law, that part was obvious. Some people choose to ignore the logic and morality and hide behind "this is the law" excuse, that does not help in this case: if the law is right, just explain how, if the law is broken, say it so.

Fair enough. But it's murky. I mean, it's arguable that any discrimination based on existential stuff -- such as gender, "race" and disability -- is immoral. Because it's just who you are, not something that you've chosen, something that you're responsible for.

Also, when it's about stuff like housing and services, there's not much basis for discrimination. Except for providing access to those with disabilities. And that seems fair.

When it's about employment, even if there are data that might justify discrimination, it's all about statistical distributions for populations. So there's too much uncertainty when you apply it to individuals. And there's also the fact that untangling innate/genetic and developmental/sociological factors is impossible.

For health and life insurance, basing rates on age and preexisting conditions clearly makes economic sense. Older people will likely cost more than younger people. And people diagnosed with cancer etc will likely cost more than people generlly. But for health insurance, there are social justice arguments that discrimination is unfair.

For vehicle insurance, it's undeniable that young men have more accidents than young women, and middle-aged people generally. And that old people people also have more accidents. At least two factors distinguish that from health insurance. First, there's the sense that people can choose to drive more carefully, and have fewer accidents. Also, there's the argument that driving isn't as essential as medical care.

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