Live data from Hacker News

Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

papers.ssrn.com

111–120 of 162 posts

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#111

Same thing with job applications: "In an attempt to increase workplace diversity, the Australian public service implemented a .. trial removing all mention of gender and ethnicity from applications. It was found that removing gender from thousands of applications made women less likely to advance through the recruitment process compared to cases where gender was visible. The trial found that a woman's name on an appl…

no, we are need to allow people who have desiers to come here 4 good life n success, no filter for sex. in India IIT is 64% man, so you are only penalise unfair men by these action. we are needing to let almost any person who want to be in America to be here not have a nother restricting.

Are you sure about that 64% number? At my IIT, it was more a 6:1 ratio.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#112
post #93
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main problem. It’s hard. We could fix it if we were despotic and put people into tracks like the USSR who turned out lots of talented women in STEM, but were not and Film, TV and YT, etc highlight the easy life of glamour and fame, etc. So you end up with a million wanna be starlets and fewer women in STEM than statistics would have. Let “Hollywood” glamorize STEM, propagandize it and you’ll get a better…

> if we were despotic and put people into tracks like the USSR who turned out lots of talented women in STEM It sound like BS. Have you learned it in school?

Their does seem to be an inverse correlation between what we consider free and rich societies and despotic poor societies and their equality in STEM fields.

You need not look far, even very conservative countries such as Belarus have stronger representation in IT than a much more liberal society such as Sweden.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#113
post #107
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in France there was a large scale "anonymous CV" experiment, and going against what was expected, made people from minorities or poor neighbourhoods more disadvantaged. https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2011/04/04/le-cv-anon...

Just shooting from the hip here, but isn't that expected because their CVs would be worse due to the current climate putting them at a disadvantage? My gut feeling is that you need to have that system in place for many years to even the playing field first. Starting with fresh graduates getting equal chances, and then slowly letting that effect build up year after year.

Yes, but a simplistic interpretation of meritocracy serves anti diversity narratives and feelings of victim hood.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#114
post #107
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in France there was a large scale "anonymous CV" experiment, and going against what was expected, made people from minorities or poor neighbourhoods more disadvantaged. https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2011/04/04/le-cv-anon...

Just shooting from the hip here, but isn't that expected because their CVs would be worse due to the current climate putting them at a disadvantage? My gut feeling is that you need to have that system in place for many years to even the playing field first. Starting with fresh graduates getting equal chances, and then slowly letting that effect build up year after year.

Just shooting from the other hip, but isn't correcting for SES something that can easily be done in the study, and is commonly done?

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#115
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s worth noting that that finding is not universal, and other studies do find the opposite. My brief skim through Google scholar does seem to show a fairly divided field here. http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%... https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/19805/1/Cole%20et%20al.%2020... https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36436480/Gender_et_bia...

Hmm... First study: "Minorities may be particularly likely to experience disadvantage when they apply to ostensibly pro-diversity employers." That doesn't quite fit the narrative. Also, the study examines the practice of "resume whitening" as something that some minority applicants (less than 50%, so a minority) do to combat their expectations of potential bias. It does not say anything itself about whether such bias…

The first one might be because companies that make a big deal about being pro diversity have already identified a problem and are trying to combat it by making big deal (not necessarily by doing anything else), whereas normal companies don't need to advertise that because they already have a wide variety of employees.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#116
post #112
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we were despotic and put people into tracks like the USSR who turned out lots of talented women in STEM It sound like BS. Have you learned it in school?

Their does seem to be an inverse correlation between what we consider free and rich societies and despotic poor societies and their equality in STEM fields. You need not look far, even very conservative countries such as Belarus have stronger representation in IT than a much more liberal society such as Sweden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

One reason why in less free countries, women and girls choose STEM in a higher proportion is that choosing STEM fields was a better economical decision compared to other jobs, rather than being forced into it for ideological reasons by their states.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ludicrous question.

Is it? The data in the original comment indicates that Chinese H1B applications are substantially more female heavy than most countries. So unless you're prepared to argue that Canada and the UK are "suppressing female H1B applicants in systemic ways" even more than China, or you have some other source of data indicating a bias, there has to be another explanation. The story could plausibly be true if restricted to j…

[deleted]

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#118

From abstract: ” Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions.” In other words: The preferred resu…

it's not ignore. I think they'd be remiss to not mention the detail SOMEWHERE in their study, but I'd consider it bad science to conclude some other fact that your experiment/observational study was not designed for.

They should design an experiment suitable to justifying that conclusion, if that's what they wanted to prove. at best, the author's should conclude on that particular thread, "more research is needed."

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#119
The author's correctly identify the limitation that the research does not account for bias subsequent to meeting the email authors, but as others have pointed out, it does not mention the limitation that they did not send out pitches proportional to the real world. This is an incredibly obvious causal explanation, and puts in a bad light the scientific integrity of the authors. Which is a shame, because their actual study is interesting and seems fairly rigorous.

I read through the actual paper to see if they mentioned this limitation somewhere, not just the abstract, and could not find it. If someone else managed to spot some small clause buried in those pages, please mention where.

On a different note, why are academic papers so unnecessarily long? There was a lot of repetition in this one.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#120
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just shooting from the hip here, but isn't that expected because their CVs would be worse due to the current climate putting them at a disadvantage? My gut feeling is that you need to have that system in place for many years to even the playing field first. Starting with fresh graduates getting equal chances, and then slowly letting that effect build up year after year.

Just shooting from the other hip, but isn't correcting for SES something that can easily be done in the study, and is commonly done?

Psychologist here, and yes this is commonly done in studies where you have access to that information. However these statistical controls are imperfect at best due to things like generational effects of education. E.g., first generation educated behaves differently from a long line of educated family members in ways that are sometimes hard to define and difficult to measure.
Post reply on HN