31–40 of 391 posts
It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it was no longer considered OK even before the 90s.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it. There is no easy way to fix it, but there is a way to fix it. I won't go so far as to say that it's obvious to many people. The way to do it? Work to change men's attitudes and biases towards women. It can definitely be done, but it takes hard work and cultural change. I would recommend the book "The Macho Paradox" by Jackson Katz for anyone inter…
Why you need to change MEN attitudes? Most HR departments are staffed by women for example, they would be the ones that saw a "Mr." in the resume.
Because men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business, esp. in the highest levels of business/corporate hierarchy.
Of course, combating misogyny and patriarchy doesn't mean only men will have attitudes changed, but let's not pretend about the numbers of the situation.
I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get addressing me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc. Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as…
I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.
Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article. To me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect. Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect. Personally speaking,…
True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
I'm not making a moral judgment, just describing what I've seen over the years as to one explanation of how men can have a subconscious bias that prefers hiring men.
Maybe it had to do with the resume appearing more formal. Try another version with "Ms." and another with "Mrs." to really make this something we can draw conclusions from.
Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practice…
I suffered more age discrimination after a certain point in my career than gender discrimination.
And he does mention he went over the top crafting his resume...
Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practice…
All genders face gender discrimination. For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government. Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations. Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on. Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.[1]
1. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-a...
Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article. To me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect. Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect. Personally speaking,…
True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
This may sound reasonable, but this is actually the opposite of what happens. In terms of hiring, people tend to leverage existing social networks and look for people that are similar to themselves. This generally puts a bias in favor of candidates who are not women, esp. when hiring for positions that are higher up in a company or business, as men generally outnumber women in higher level positions.
> What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
Bias against women can take many forms and it may not be overt. Attitudes and basic opinions on women often form the basis for a actions that are micro aggressions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
To that end, some people (men or women) may see women as not fit to do a task, not fit with a particular culture or set of workers, not able to interact with other depts. or businesses as a representative of a company, etc. Of course, there may be overt sexist discrimination as well.
That's really, really sad. And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect. What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.
There could be conscious discrimination against the resume once the "married with kids" line is added; I wouldn't be so quick to assume that surely nobody is doing it. Honestly (and this is embarrassing to admit), I'd probably think much differently about a female job applicant who had that line on her resume than a male applicant. In particular, I wouldn't necessarily expect that line to imply anything about a male…
If a man is married with kids - then he's got more commitment to work because he's got the responsibility of a family depending on his income.
If a woman is married with kids - the she's got less commitment to work because she's got the responsibility for the well-being of a family depending on her attention.