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

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

#401
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The black family was only endangered because of those very same people who wrote all sorts of asinine rules for the social safety net programs that penalized stable households, penalized married couples and penalized above the table jobs. Were they poor? Sure. Were they marginalized? You bet. But the single mother, the child without a father figure and the idle black man were not serious issues, let alone stereotypes…

Also horribly flawed. In several states if you are not white your resume is just thrown in the trash. There are several studies on this. People simply do not like others who they do not see as equals or as similar to them.

So that somehow justifies unequal treatment of people in another state? The only long term solution is not being part of the problem by discriminating on anything except on value brought to the job.

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

#402

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.

>women are weeded out >especially computer science By choice or by force? N=1, but I still remember teachers saying "all the girls that should be in CS are going to math instead, they think CS is a boys' club" despite repeatedly catering 'women in tech' and such. According to some anecdotes I heard, this also changes outside Western countries, where women pick CS much more quickly. >statistics about women in STEM Act…

> "all the girls that should be in CS are going to math instead, they think CS is a boys' club"

One of my female classmates who took an intro CS as an elective hated how the class was run. Essentially half the class was already proficient in programming and were expected to solve the problems on your own without talking. This was different than my math classes which were more likely to have female teachers and we were to work in groups to solve problems (this was how precalc was done).

She said she felt scared by the expectation to already know these things before the class begun and all the silence while working.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> exercising their own agency and choosing different fields. If we accept this as true, fields dominated by women should receive the same grace.

You're conflating two issues: discrimination and self-selection. Discrimination is never ok. If a woman applies to a job as a developer, she should absolutely not be discriminated against because of her gender. Self-selection is always ok. If women in aggregate are more interested in biology than computer science, that is fine. This paper is evidence of discrimination, not self-selection.

> If women in aggregate are more interested in biology than computer science, that is fine.

Do you think there is something innate in women that makes them less interested in computer science? Personally I find that extremely unlikely. The only other explanation for why they would self-select away from tech is that they feel they're being told to. That might be fine by you, but I think it's a problem.

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

#404

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…

>Women used to be dominant in computing. Literally were the computers

This is pathetic cope and completely misleading. The "programming" of that time had almost nothing to do with the modern practice. These "computer" roles were for number crunching, not software development.

You're bending over backwards to deny the fact that men and women are biologically predisposed to certain interests. Why? Is it some weird sort of insecurity?

>It has nothing to do with intelligence curves.

It has literally everything to do with intelligences curves. The male distribution of intelligence has a wider variance - that's a statistical descriptor of the normal distribution. This means there are more men at the extremes of both ends of the curve. And an inescapable consequence is that men will be overrepresented among knowledge workers in meritocratic system. Don't worry, you can take solace in the fact that this also suggests a larger population of male criminals because it also means there are more dumb men at the other end of the spectrum.

The lengths to which people will go to deny the effects of meaningful, proven differences among demographics is infuriating. It's gaslighting and it helps absolutely no one in the long run, assuming you want a functioning society.

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

#405
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there is ageism from younger devs, but be sure not to confuse it with respect. In my experience, younger devs (like me at the time) were always excited to learn from older devs.

But what if that older dev is only at par with the younger one: will she or he be treated equally, if everything else was equal? In other words, is an old person expected to compensate for her or his lack of youth by an excess of wisdom?

I think there is a certain expectation that after 10-20 years in the industry you bring some added value a fresh grad won't bring. Surely you must have learned a few things, no? If not that's not a great sign.

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

#406
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intelligence distribution skews more male at the higher end Really? You think there are inherently more intelligent men than women?

Check the chess grandmasters distribution. Or Go.

Chess statistics do not show evidence of a significant difference:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-gender-gap-in-chess

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a p…

Genuinely asking: Is there a limit as to viewpoint diversity that should be tolerated in perceptions of diversity? eg. Should viewpoint diversity be extended to welcoming "women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "black people are not human beings"? If so, how does one value an opinion and also the opinion that some opinions are worth less than others?

I think it is fair to not spend time and resources engaging with such ideas, as long as there is a good "decision record" documentation explaining that this subject was already discussed, decisions were made, and there is no point coming back to it. Same as with flat Earth - have some documentation thoroughly debunking the idea and point to it anybody trying to start the conversation again. Tell them they need to first read through all of it. If they are still not convinced after that, they are free to lay out their argument, but it is on them to make the argument strong, which should be, like, really hard, given the plethora of evidence we have that Earth is not flat.

In the examples you gave the "decision record" would be fairly simple - we assume that human rights [1] are a given.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights

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

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. It's not hard to connect with people on Linkedin, even if you haven't seen them in years.

But is some random person you worked with 20 years ago reaches out, what are you going to do? I would send the a link to the careers page, and that's about it. Unless person was a total rock star, you probably can't speak much to their abilities after so much time.

If I reached out a former colleague for a referral, and they just sent me a link to the careers page, I would be trying to figure out at what point I offended them so deeply. You're not saying that this person is a shoo-in for the role and will be promoted within the year, you're saying that you know what the quality of their work was at the time you worked together.

I can think of people from my first real programming job that I would hire or refer in a heartbeat. I am can also think of a couple who I might just send a link to the careers page.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. If your conception of diversity doesn't include viewpoint diversity, you are operating within a prejudicial, small-minded, small-hearted, and regressive framework. If you belive the most salient details about a person can be read from their appearance, you are a bigot. This cuts every which way, but many want to pretend it's not true for their own biases. This includes seeing someone with blue hair and a p…

Genuinely asking: Is there a limit as to viewpoint diversity that should be tolerated in perceptions of diversity? eg. Should viewpoint diversity be extended to welcoming "women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "black people are not human beings"? If so, how does one value an opinion and also the opinion that some opinions are worth less than others?

You're genuinely asking about the most extreme and uncharitable interpretation of the GP's post? Your question sounds like "If we should be kind to everyone, what about serial killers?" It is so out-of-place in the picture that's being painted, that I (and I'm sure others) am skeptical of the question. Maybe you can first qualify it by explaining how it is relevant in anything other than an extreme thought experiment?

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think DEI efforts can greatly vary. I know that we've worked really hard to ensure that we don't disadvantage anyone -- but it's harder than it sounds. DEI is often dealing in zero sum spaces. For example, most of the staff is white males. We try hard to hire the best person for the role, but we've instituted a policy where we mandate interviewing underrepresented groups. Not that we will hire them, but that we wil…

> But because of this the interview process can get lengthy and white male candidates maybe tire of waiting and go elsewhere. So in some sense its not fair to the white male. Isn't it equally obnoxious to everyone? I'm not sure why only the white males would be put out by the wait. The wait, while due to the lengthy interview process, isn't due to them being white males. Unless you interview the white males first for…

If you need to wait for someone who is 1% off the population you might be waiting a while.
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