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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

#521
post #67

During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. But what bothers me more is the ageism. The number of times an old person has been rejected from a job is too damn high. The reasons have always been "he may not work well with young people", "seniority complex", "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. I fear when I am into 40s or 50s, I will face the s…

As I have gotten older, my pay has continued to increase. "Over qualified" means that I want too much money . (I don't apologize for that. I bring more value than I did 20 years ago. Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.) Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... ar…

> If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick.

That needs to become outdated thinking, since most people but particularly the younger ones, don't stick around any job for more than a year or two max regardless.

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

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree that society is implanting ideas in girls that they're not capable of succeeding in tech. Then why do you think girls are self selecting away from computer science? Unless you believe they are somehow biologically wired to enjoy tech less it has to be because they're receiving messaging that causes them to believe they will enjoy it less than other fields relative to boys, right? I guess from your link y…

Has anyone here ever been married to a woman who isn't a software engineer? (Or at least talked to one? The fuck) > Then why do you think girls are self selecting away from computer science? Why do you think? Hypothesize. Do you think women/girls today are being told in-large they're too dumb or stupid to do such? (Especially considering girls actually get better test scores and grades than boys from an early age - c…

I mean you know what I think. Girls ignore explicit messaging and understand that society sees math based professions as manly so they self select away from them.

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

#523
post #395

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…

Viewpoint diversity is very, very important. But for a large contingent of the workforce, their viewpoints are already represented in the numerous implicit and ideological supports that our society has developed, without them even needing to be present: this is called "hegemony". If you do not acknowledge this is the case, then DEI efforts can seem very unfair. But one should be careful not to allow emotions and sens…

DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former.

> one should be careful not to allow emotions and sensitivities to creep in, to do the ideological work for you

Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending. GP was clear and reasoned about the contradictions they saw in DEI efforts, and your dismissal of them is quite frustrating and unproductive.

Also, are you saying that the work that needs to be done is, in fact, ideological? Ideology should be nowhere near this.

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

#524

My sense is that most responses here are only to the title of the submission (the actual article title is "Gender discrimination in hiring: An experimental reexamination of the Swedish case"). Skimming through said actual article, it looks like the "against men" hiring discrimination is ~completely driven by this: "...In female-dominated occupations such as cleaner, childcare provider, preschool teacher, accounting c…

> Which sure sounds to me like "employers try to fill low-status, low-pay, often-crappy female-dominated jobs with yet more females".

What an absurd interpretation. It takes a certain sort of mindset to react as if women having an advantage in certain jobs is somehow a downside, just because these jobs are "low status." It's not as if a man who gets rejected as a cleaner is going to instead become a FAANG engineer.

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

#525
post #450
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, the hard engineering fields (e.g., mechanical, civil, etc.) are much more tolerant about age and more receptive to the benefits and tradeoffs of both youth and, erm.., "experience" (said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)

what about someone in his/her 40s with no previous experience in the field?

I wasn't necessarily saying they have to make a complete career switch but rather find a niche within those fields that can use their software experience. For example, building a pressure systems database that isn't god-awful would be useful for oil/gas or firms that do aerospace research. Knowing the mechanical side would obviously be a huge plus, but it's also possible to lean on the mechanical engineers who are the system experts. Same thing with managing environmental requirements, or building automation/energy systems, data acquisition for medical devices, or software quality testing etc.

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

#526
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?

Before everyone gets upset, this is a known fact and it's not a bad thing for women either. The skew only means the smartest 1% of men are smarter than the smartest 1% of women. On the other side of the curve the same is true. The dumbest men are dumber than the dumbest women. That means a larger percent of women occupy the IQ sweet spot.

> The skew only means the smartest 1% of men are smarter than the smartest 1% of women.

I don't think you can put it like that. Even if the IQ (or similar "cognitive capacity" score) distribution is broader&shallower for males, it doesn't mean what you had said.

Judith Polgar was #7th in chess rankings, even if overall number of players scored with ELO is counted in millions?

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the staff is white males I'm a computer programmer. Since about the late 90's, virtually all of my coworkers have been Indians. Yet I keep hearing from the DEI group that white males are overrepresented (and that this is bad). I never hear from the DEI group that Indians (or asians) are overrepresented (and whether this is also good or bad).

From that we can conclude that you work at a very unusual workplace, but not much else unless your workplace also includes a noticeable fraction of all software engineers.

Actually, ten different "very unusual" workplaces in a row over the course of 25 years.

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

#528
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How could either one of these viewpoints possibly come up during a job interview ?

You'd be surprised! I once had lunch with a candidate who was glad no women were interviewing him, because he found salads distasteful.

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"(6.1%) were female"

This article doesn't prove the point you thought you were making.

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

#530
post #449
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds believable, but how many people successfully transition into those?

It depends on what you mean by "transition". It's probably hard to transition from a software engineer to a licensed structural engineer or the like. But it's much easier to transfer into a software or software-adjacent role related to the field. Those fields have lots of opportunity for controls engineers, or data acquisition system developers, or data scientists, or even developing home-grown applications. The flip…

Sounds a bit like they might put you in the IT rather than the engineering department if you come in as a SE. Control is far outside the ballpark of a typical SE, unless you happen to have studied EE (which is arguably just another one of the 'hard' engineering fields). Sounds like short of having a relevant degree you won't be an engineer in those areas, and very few people get those mid-career.

An area that people do transition into and that almost puts a premium on plain age is therapy/counselling, but that's a far shot from technical fields.

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