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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

#151

Post by marvin »

king_jester wrote: post #90
nawitus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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…

> 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…

On the "slave labor" point, he is probably talking about compulsory military service in the defense force. If I'm correctly informed, this still happens in Finland and Norway. Those who opt-out to the military service for ideological reasons still have to do a year of "community service".

Although Norway's government decided this year to make military service mandatory for both genders. So I'm assuming that parent is from Finland, Sweden or Denmark.

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

#153

Post by Jach »

anaptdemise wrote: post #143
belorn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 admi…

As this Hungarian illustrates, getting the government involved to guarantee these sorts of "anti-discrimination" rules can lead to a very bad outcome: http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/01/09/this-is-why-i-dont-g... (Too bad the guy's blog has died, he had some more good rants on it that made me very glad not to live in Hungary.)

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

#154

Post by pessimizer »

king_jester wrote: post #33
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.

> Why you need to change MEN attitudes? 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.

>men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business

This is the problem, not (only) men's attitudes. The most screwed up part is that this inequality often holds even in female dominated professions, like librarians and teachers. I'm into forcing companies to do things rather than waiting for the attitudes of millions to change, esp. when the effect of that attitude only increases the income and options of the people whose attitudes you are trying to change.

Institute quotas and penalize companies if they don't make them. In the beginning, companies may have to hire women that are less talented than the men that are available to them, but if the positions are there, women in general will up their games to compete with each other for them. It's basic economics.

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

#155

Post by hack_edu »

nawitus wrote: post #30
hack_edu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to see this in action? Create near-identical profiles on any job site frequented by recruiters, one profile male and another female. Your male account, fictional or not, will get a measurable amount more attention and see more outreach.

The studies I've seen actually demonstrate that women get called for interviews slightly more often than men. (The studies were not in software engineering, so different industries certainly are different).

It would be especially interesting to compare by gender the amount of interest, frequency of landing an interview, and rate of success of landing an interview. I'd be very curious to see if biases shift depending on the phase of hiring process.

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

#156

Post by larrys »

waqf wrote: post #144
zmj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"legitimate criticisms you could make of the comment in question"

What are they? I'm curious about what is prompting downvotes other than the obvious sorta somewhat non-pc patina.

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

#157

Post by joshuacc »

lmm wrote: post #137
kragen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be excellent wherever it's feasible. The way Gladwell tells it (so take it with a grain of salt), when symphony orchestras started conducting their auditions with a screen in place so they couldn't see the person playing the instrument, the fraction of female musicians in top orchestras shot way up. However, in cases where the quality of in-person interaction is a major part of what you're trying to assess…

How important is personal interaction to most programming jobs, really?

I'd go so far as to say that it might be slightly more important than the ability to write code, depending on the company, the project, etc. Being able to effectively discuss requirements and technical tradeoffs with non-technical stakeholders is extremely valuable.

Obviously some level of programming expertise is required, but once you've crossed that minimum threshold, personal communication becomes a larger and larger share of an employees value.

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

#159

Post by nimblegorilla »

tehwalrus wrote: post #17
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.

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…

Reducing discrimination seems like a good idea, but reducing everyone to semi-anonymous UIDs seems extremely dehumanizing.

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

#160

Post by munificent »

lmm wrote: post #137
kragen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be excellent wherever it's feasible. The way Gladwell tells it (so take it with a grain of salt), when symphony orchestras started conducting their auditions with a screen in place so they couldn't see the person playing the instrument, the fraction of female musicians in top orchestras shot way up. However, in cases where the quality of in-person interaction is a major part of what you're trying to assess…

How important is personal interaction to most programming jobs, really?

Personal interaction is critical to any job unless your boss is a robot.
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