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Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

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191–200 of 666 posts

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hire more white men" etc. Isn't this illegal?

In many states, discrimination laws only apply to "protected classes" , which is strictly defined as specific lists of races/religions/lgbt.. If you are white male, you are often not protected by these laws.

The relevant piece of legislation is not state-by-state but the Civil Rights Act of 1965. It defines protected classes, and it defines them as attributes that you cannot discriminate along, not groups; whites and blacks are (de jure, not necessarily de facto) equally protected by race's status as a protected class.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#192

Throwaway. I'm happy to have more women in tech and hope it occurs or continues. However, virtually everyone recruiting in tech has observed some toxic diversity initiatives, I would venture. Some examples I have seen personally or one degree removed from me. - pressure on HMs to hire more women despite 95% of applicants being male - people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hir…

To add to your list:

- referral bonuses, but only for diversity hires

- hiring freezes, except diversity hires

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#193
post #103

In the US, male nurses are highly valued. I am not sure why this is not so in Sweden. On the other hand, people are wary of male preschool teachers. These two fields seem to be equivalent in Sweden. In the US - Cleaners are not well paid. I am not sure why men want to join this field. The best cleaner I ever had left as soon as she landed a better paying job. I see plenty of husband and wife teams where the wife does…

> I am not sure why men want to join this field.

Because having a job is better than not having a job. You could say the same thing for being a dishwasher, say. Just because people typically don't want to make an entire career out of a job doesn't mean that discrimination isn't problematic.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope these people are in the minority. I'm 21, I have my first internship coming up in the summer, and I am ecstatic to learn from engineers more experienced than me, no matter what age.

Yes, definitely in the minority.

A vocal minority unfortunately, and hiring is so driven by the fear of hiring the wrong person that just about any pushback is given a large amount of credence generally.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#195

Anecdotally I have seen this in person at a large tech startup. The recruiting team was all women, mainly white, and they were incredibly cliquey. Every hire was a woman. Men were turned down with vague excuses like “not a culture fit.” All while aggressively pushing DEI initiatives and interventions on the tech side. I don’t think the irony of this ever crossed their minds.

It isn't irony, it is hypocrisy. And they have considered it. When you put the thumbscrews on them, they say things like "You can't discriminate against men" and talk about punching-up versus punching-down, etc. They have a bunch of thought-terminating cliches in place to deal with this already. They will talk about the "larger context" of society, and "every day is already men's day."

There's a pretty funny picture of the HuffPo team at one point and it is just ... young white women. That's it. That's your diversity.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#196

Quoted post unavailable.

I think this is sarcasm. But I can’t tell anymore. As a white guy with a really not white name, I will note that things seem to go better when I’m seen. There seems to be a lot of complaints and outrage from people that have it pretty good.

There has been a number of cases with people using a francophone name vs. An anglophone or allophone name in Quebec yielding different success in initial hiring stages. People are tribal.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I was willing to listen to your point (that perhaps some companies favor women and so women disproportionately percolate to those companies… at least in theory seems like a possible argument, even if I’m skeptical) until you got here: >> Also, because the intelligence distribution skews more male at the higher end, a company will be disproportionately male simply by being more technical and having a more difficult hi…

>And once the personal computer became widespread with computer game culture arising and a culture of harassing women until they leave became common enough to be an issue, why wouldn’t one expect that those who developed an interest in computer programming (ie from contact with computer games, etc) to be predominantly men? (And I love computer games, but there is an insane amount of harassment. Everyone who plays knows this.)

I'm sure this is a part of it, but I think you're overselling how impactful the harassment part is. The skewed ratio in CS has been something going on for decades. Online gaming, especially with voice, is the primary offender of online sexism in games. These types of games weren't that popular until early/mid 2010s. If you were interested in other types of games and largely avoided online games, sexism wasn't nearly as bad. That's not to mention a sizeable portion of CS graduates have no interest in games, let alone online games, as a whole.

Meanwhile, this doesn't answer the gender-equality paradox. At the same time, these "less gender-equal" countries definitely don't have a shortage of misogynist messages on their online boards, gaming communities, forums, etc. Still as misogynist, but more women entering CS: what gives?

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#198
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see where the DEI stuff has gotten to. Historically under the law, discrimination based on gender was prohibited. There was no provision for allowed discrimination based on gender (ie, prohibiting men from becoming teachers or nurses). Now we are being told that it is OK to discriminate against men and the law only protects "marginalized" groups. In elder care (especially with heavier elderly) a m…

> in schools, many boys might benefit from some good male role models in these systems Very much so, the female domination of the educational system is a disaster not in the making but one we're reaping the bitter fruits from. It is not only boys who would benefit from having good male role models, this is just as much true for girls. Unfortunately education is one of those fields where men have been pushed out and a…

Interesting. A teacher I had a lot of respect for in high school was a male teacher (black as well if that matters). He was BY FAR the most strict of any teachers in the school. He stood at his door and locked it when the bell rang, you had to sit in the hall if you were late for his entire period. His standards were super high.

Interestingly, he ALSO organized large group events (including community / school events). I always thought he was strict because when you deal with huge groups of kids - you kind of need to be to keep things going in a good direction. He was loved.

He did get run out of the school though because he was supposedly "racist". Not worth getting into, but I had to laugh out loud as an alumni. He put on cultural events in the school cafeteria during lunch. I'm sure the twitter army that came for him had no clue about his actual background or teaching. He landed on his feet (thankfully)!

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#199

This comment section is gonna be a RIDE... To actually comment on the topic at hand: the reason there's still male-dominated spaces is that women are weeded out far earlier than the hiring stage. See, for example, statistics about women in STEM and especially computer science and realize that hiring managers don't even have to be sexist for male-dominated fields to exist, even though they still are.

No post body was provided.

Re: Hiring discrimination: a problem for men in female-dominated occupations

#200
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR department at a previous workplace was like that. All women, all friends, all worked with each other or were relatives of someone... their personal lives were entirely intertwined with work. Most weren't at work most days and this was when they had a no work from home policy years ago. Loud personal calls all day long. I wasn't even in that department and the drama that came from it was exhausting. They would ofte…

My team goes through something similar with our sister company that's in the same building. Their product is made better by being ran by social types so their organization is entirely personable, outgoing, and very social. They constantly complain that we don't join them in multi-org events but none of us (including our manager) want to join them. If I had to consistently have small talk with a bunch of socialites, I…

Workplace culture is a weird thing.

Sometimes a group's workplace culture is ... not a lot of culture. Depending on how things are going, that might not be bad.

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