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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

#141

Post by Spooky23 »

dominotw wrote: post #87
sliverstorm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it isn't a problem that needs fixing? Maybe making work another place of constant judgement and time under the PC microscope would not be a net positive? Remember there's a difference between bare-faced misogyny and garden variety politically incorrectness.

Nice observation. One of my colleague got a stern warning for using the word dick ( 'dont be a dick' kind of way) around female colleagues, because two women sitting behind him complained to management about it. I am sure he is not discriminatory, biased or misogynistic. I guess it wise to think about what you are saying and not say stuff like 'fuck off', 'stop bitching' which may be construed as inappropriate.

This is an issue with jerks in any situation that entitles them to some automatic due process or protection. That might be gender/race/disability or union affiliation or nepotism.

People who are skilled in manipulating the environment use whatever tools are available to get their way. When you decide that an entire class of people, say women, are unwelcome because you're worried about dealing with chickenshit complaints, you are discriminating illegally.

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

#142

Post by andrewflnr »

zorbo wrote: post #105
Peroni wrote: post #70

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.

When it comes to sexual bias, hacker news readers/commenters generally discard the "evidence" bit. And of course, nobody mentions the author's obvious anti-male and age bias ("but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle-aged men who thought I was a woman").

One stereotype used as a rhetorical device doesn't imply he actually thinks worse of "middle-aged men" than any other group. That was just the relevant stereotype for the situation.

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

#143

Post by anaptdemise »

belorn wrote: post #121
pessimizer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would not call it bigotry, but rather stupidity. They are not the first people ever thinking the idea of separating female and men, or suggested that some benefits can be achieved that way. Schools like to separate girls from boys, and points towards improved and safer environment. Conferences like to create women only sections, in the idea (with some irony) that it would improve gender equality, and like schools,…

> Schools have almost gone through this stage and fully gone over to mixed classrooms.

To their detriment. As a product of both coed and all boys private schools, there is a stark difference in teaching and disceplin in single sex schools that research shows improves outcomes. Hit http://scholar.google.com/ with "single sex education." There is a huge discrepancy in male performance especially that most teachers admit a preference to teaching girls as they "behave" better.

Bigotry and sexism exists, but the "problem" is an effect of the US obsession with political correctness and an overly sensitive and litigious society. There are cases of systematic discrimination in organizations, but they are not as pervasive as a few decades ago, so there has been progress, especially in corporate environments. An example is a female cousin with a law degree. Being a women of breading age, she was specifically asked if she intended to have children in the next 5 years which was a non-starter. These were small firms that couldn't afford to have a junior partner off for maternity leave. She had no problem with that at a large corporation.

On equality, if you start giving men maternity leave in the same way as women, and effectively change societies views on gender roles in the home, you might start seeing that form of discrimination disappear as in the scandinavian countries.

There is much to be said about differences in men and women's personalities. Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that. So as long as the kid gloves are on...

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

#144

Post by waqf »

zmj wrote: post #127
larrys wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like saying "I just bought a car and I"m happy with it but I still like to look at other cars at the car show or in the showroom because it makes me feel good".

Do you understand that unsolicited comments on someone's appearance are not ok?

There are legitimate criticisms you could make of the comment in question, but "I was curious what you looked like" is assuredly not a comment on someone's appearance.

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

#145

Post by lmm »

lsiebert wrote: post #119

If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualifi…

Why should I be concerned? I like working with talented people, but my experience has been that those employers that employ gender-balanced workforce employ a lower proportion of highly talented people than those that do not. And if we're speaking solely about self-interest then as a male such discrimination works in my favour.

So no, that's not "all the reason any intelligent person needs", you have to give an actual reason.

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

#146

Post by bbanyc »

yaddayadda wrote: post #103
tehwalrus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a proposal going around the Lib Dems in the UK at one point[1] to make it illegal to have names on CVs; because they describe gender, and sometimes race, too. The proposal went on to say that that people should apply for jobs using their National Insurance number (like a social security number, but basically just used as a UID with the tax office - I don't know what else a SSN does, but it seems to be more…

The first 3 digits of a SSN indicate where the child was born. While not as prejudicial an aspect, there are definitely some geographical biases among some groups.

Only for younger people - SSNs have only been assigned at birth since the 1980s. My mother was born in West Virginia but her SSN has a Minnesota prefix, because that's where she lived when she got her first job.

Someone who wasn't born a US citizen would only get assigned an SSN with their green card or work visa, and I'd imagine the prefix would indicate their first place of residence in the US.

So the most you can get from a pre-2011 SSN is that someone lived in some particular state in some particular year, and that information is likely inferable from the resume anyway.

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

#147

Post by larrys »

lmm wrote: post #139
zmj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that unsolicited comments on someone's appearance are not ok?

They're not? Why not? Seriously; unsolicited negative comments on pretty much any aspect are not ok. Sexually charged comments are not ok in most environments. But I don't want to live in a world where complimenting someone on their appearance is a bad thing.

"They're not? Why not?"

Add: Agree. I'm truly baffled by the parent comment.

People say things about appearance all the time. And I can't think of many cases where a comment (positive) about how someone appears (if said in the proper tone of voice [1]) is not appropriate. And even in the case of a negative comment you'd have to take the relationship of the parties into account (agreeing that that's a much broader situation and safer to not say anything).

[1] Of course I can think of many other exceptions (person dying in the hospital and you say "you look great") but the parent comment doesn't appear to be suggesting fringe cases.

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

#148

Post by pqqqqq »

papsosouid wrote: post #130
king_jester wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All genders face gender discrimination. This is true, but it should be noted that gender discrimination is fundamentally related to patriarchy and misogyny. > 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. I don't know anything about this so I can't really comment. > Men and women face about the same amount of gen…

>This is true, but it should be noted that gender discrimination is fundamentally related to patriarchy and misogyny. Making faith based statements like that and acting as though they are evidence based is not productive. There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their redefinition of patriarchy. >In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring. No it is not. A system that was equal would be…

> Making faith based statements like that and acting as though they are evidence based is not productive.

Cool; how about some evidence for your custody assertions?

> There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their redefinition of patriarchy.

Systemic sexism is widely documented. This ranges from pay gaps [1] to harsher views on overweight women vs men [2] to sexual assault [3]. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you objecting to appropriation of the word 'patriarchy'?

[1] http://www.oecd.org/social/family/LMF1.5%20Gender%20pay%20ga...

[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.1108%2F02610150910937916

[3] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF

> And those don't count because of what?

Read the next sentence. Male rape is predominantly a the parent isn't saying that male rape victims "don't count".

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

#149

Post by notahacker »

swengw wrote: post #96
speeder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't address the real gender discrimination issues, but having gender-balanced HR departments could have helped Kim O'Grady. Currently, if you include your photo in your resume, being a beautiful (rather than average-looking) woman seems to lower your chance of getting an interview [1]. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/21551535

Having a culture in which it was normal to post resumes with photographs would also have benefited Kim O Grady...

Either way, HR didn't hate him because he was beautiful, and there are conceivable reasons why even a gender balanced HR department might screen out candidates posting their "beautiful" photos along with an applicatiom that don't involve petty jealously.

If photos are relatively rare in a culture receiving applications or the photos used are glamorous model applications, one could even argue that it's a reasonable alarm about a person's willingness to nakedly milk their looks. Even if that isn't the case, a non-partisan observer might [over]correct a perceived (and often real) tendency for beautiful people to receive more favourable treatment in some environments. Maybe they could apply the same criteria to tall men too...

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

#150

Post by larrys »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
tehwalrus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a proposal going around the Lib Dems in the UK at one point[1] to make it illegal to have names on CVs; because they describe gender, and sometimes race, too. The proposal went on to say that that people should apply for jobs using their National Insurance number (like a social security number, but basically just used as a UID with the tax office - I don't know what else a SSN does, but it seems to be more…

It won't work everywhere; e.g. SSN equivalent in Poland has sex encoded as one of the digits (determined by whether it's even or odd).

"SSN equivalent in Poland has sex encoded"

That gets supplied when sending a resume?

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