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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

#181

Post by stfu »

noloqy wrote: post #29
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.

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?

But what about language pattern, vocabulary and dialects? What about university names or degrees if it makes companies favor those over others that are self taught. One can put this into an absurd chain of arguments...

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

#182

Post by jrarredondo »

speeder wrote: post #21
bitops wrote: post #13

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.

There is an implicit big assumption there, that HR actually determines who is screened in and/or hired. It's typically the hiring manager who does.

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

#183

Post by Scaevolus »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #180
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.

There absolutely is an easy, obvious way to fix it. It's just something that gives men the screaming meemies. Quotas. Don't give me guff about "the best person for the job". You've been picking the best man for the job.

Would the quotas be proportional to the applicant pool's huge gender gaps? Only ~20% of CS graduates are women.

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

#184

Post by scythe »

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…

>To their detriment.

In a world where sexism is still a huge problem, it seems that forcing students into a monosexual environment would only contribute to stunting their social development even more. Compare, for example, the relative incidence of sexism in a heavily male field like programming or philosophy with the amount of sexism in a gender-integrated field like biology.

This idea of separating students by gender to increase performance is really treating them like little test-taking machines: students, by and large, do not choose to take gender-segregated courses unless their parents require it of them. They're human beings. They have a fundamental right to develop in a natural social environment. And, like it or not, schools provide a large proportion of a child's social interaction, which isn't going to change anytime soon.

But most importantly, any improvements are highly controversial and tend to disappear once researchers attempt to correct for confounding.

"The Pseudoscience of Single-sex Schooling", Halpern et al, Science 2011: http://womenstudies.wisc.edu/documents/ScienceSingle-sex09-2...

The most successful school systems in the world, in Northern Europe and East Asia, are all coeducational. There are also a whole lot of interventions that don't require such drastic measures. Cracked of all publications wrote a surprisingly well-researched article on the subject:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-way...

Using a microphone and turning on the lights is a far less severe encroachment on students' freedom than, well, segregation. Seriously.

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

#185

Post by jrarredondo »

cliveowen wrote: post #4
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.

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.

At some point you do have the phone screen though.

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

#186

Post by JulianMorrison »

Scaevolus wrote: post #183
JulianMorrison wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There absolutely is an easy, obvious way to fix it. It's just something that gives men the screaming meemies. Quotas. Don't give me guff about "the best person for the job". You've been picking the best man for the job.

Would the quotas be proportional to the applicant pool's huge gender gaps? Only ~20% of CS graduates are women.

If it were me, I'd set a strict, cast-iron, no excuses 50% for the first, say, 50 years. After that things might have calmed down a bit.

Demand will drive supply, if needs be. Lack of demand has certainly driven it down.

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

#187

Post by jrarredondo »

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.

I don't know if this is obvious, or if it applies to all kinds of jobs. Something I do is give all candidates an assignment: here is a problem, solve it, and let's discuss it over Skype/Webex/etc.

The best solution typically wins. There is no way to fake talent when an actual job-related problem needs to be solved and then a solution sold to a team of folks.

There are issues with this approach too: somebody else could help the candidate, the presentation style, etc. Picking the right problem to solve is important, as is deciding ahead of time what is the criteria for selection.

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

#188

Post by ritchiea »

pessimizer wrote: post #63
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…

Agreed. I worked at a company where my CTO said "Well we couldn't seriously consider hiring a woman for this team" after interviewing a female developer. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and it was a pleasure to leave the company shortly thereafter.

It saddens me to know there are people who think the presence of women infringes on their right to make sexist remarks. And that making sexist remarks is such a vital part of their everyday life that hiring women is the unacceptable route.

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

#190

Post by jack-r-abbit »

lotyrin wrote: post #126
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.

He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics. It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.

But it happened in the "late 90s." One anecdote from 15 years ago is not really of much value today, IMO.
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