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I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

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Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#61

Post by zmj »

larrys wrote: post #55
cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #23

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…

"Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention!" My brain lit up on that sentence and I clicked on your profile to see what you looked like. (Happily married and all of that but men are visual)

Why did you post this?

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#62

Post by cpeterso »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #47
noloqy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's next? All the interviews have to take place in a dark room so that the interviewer can't see the color of the interviewee's skin?

Turing Test interviews.

IRC interviews

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#63

Post by pessimizer »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

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.

It's conscious on a lot of people's parts. I've also heard "no women, no sexual harassment suits" enough from people in tech to assume that there are a lot of bigots not dumb enough to admit it out loud.

I could be going too far, though. Maybe the kind of dumb lockerroom overshare bluster amongst the employees and managers of sexually harassing companies and departments lends itself to admitting incriminating things like that to other men with a wink wink nudge nudge.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#64

Post by simonbarker87 »

We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female.

Reasons for this could be: 1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility) 2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#65

Post by epochwolf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50
cliveowen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a simple way to fix it. Namely providing a means to submit your resume that anonymizes name, gender, age and anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment. The best HR departments already do that, at least that's the hope.

> anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment Well, you could argue that list of skills, education and work experience could bias the assessment as well. There's no clear-cut line here that separates relevant from irrelevant. Sometimes even gender is relevant. For example clerks in grocery stores are mostly women and there are bunch of good business reasons for that (even if they are based on stupid social bia…

> I can't really blame that shop for this choice, it is a rational one.

Allow me. It's illegal for an employer to discriminate against applicants based on gender when it doesn't serve a direct business purpose. (Actors, Models, Priests, etc.)

While I can sympathize and understand their reasons, I can not condone their solution.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#66

Post by jacalata »

ds9 wrote: post #31

I was very surprised to see the admission of his giving family information. Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US, and I've always thought it improper to put it on a resume. It either invites unfavorable discrimination or comes across as a ploy for sympathy or favoritism. It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it w…

I don't think Australia has the same protected class aspect as the US, so it may well be more acceptable there.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#67

Post by alanctgardner2 »

larrys wrote: post #55
cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #23

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…

"Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention!" My brain lit up on that sentence and I clicked on your profile to see what you looked like. (Happily married and all of that but men are visual)

> Happily married and all of that but men are visual

What does that even mean?

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#68

Post by untog »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #64

We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female. Reasons for this could be: 1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be…

You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#69

Post by djKianoosh »

robot_friend wrote: post #14

I am female with a hybrid background in UI design and front-end dev. A while back I created a fake linkedin profile identical to mine except with a male name. Even though it has no profile picture and no contacts, the fake profile gets more recruiter messages than I do, and for more technical positions (I get ones for design, he gets ones for engineering).

You know something.. In the past I used to do a lot tech interviews and phone screens. And I think I would actually give you bonus points if my company found you via your fake profile and we ended up chatting. After about 1.5 seconds of confusion, I'd be thinking, well, this lady has some resourcefulness...

Did you ever follow up on any of those offers via the fake profile? I'm curious to know the reaction. I know I'd look at it favorably. But I might be in the minority. Don't know.

Re: I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

#70

Post by Peroni »

The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference.

It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more.

Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.

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