I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by JulianMorrison » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #241

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.

Women are picking the best man for the job as well. "The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...

Yup. I don't dispute that. Quotas would work against that too.

Quotas really are quite a multifaceted fix.

- Directly and immediately drive up numbers.

- Create a demand for women that pulls the supply.

- Create a supply of women leaders with experience and skills.

- And create somewhere for them to go, so they don't get discouraged and quit.

- Change people's mental image of working with/for women from abstract and theoretical to specific and personal. Overwrite their stereotypes with actual experience. This goes for both men and women.

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

#252

Post by rayiner » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 12:49 AM UTC

Camillo wrote: post #249

rayiner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 That's sexism, plain and simple. Who are they to assume she's going to take extended maternity leave and be the primary care giver? They would never ask that of a man (most male law partner…

What is sexist, the fact that men and women handle the work/home balance in very different ways, or the company's recognition of that fact?

The company's assumption that the stereotype of how women handle work life balance applies to any specific woman. That's pretty much the definition of sexism. Also, the fact that a company would never ask if a man had any time consumer hobbies or other sorts of things that might prevent them giving 100% to their jobs, because when kids and women aren't involved, companies generally assume that their employees are grownups and can balance their various obligations like grownups.

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

#253

Post by hobs » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:04 AM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #219

anon808 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that HR doesn't actually hire people (except for HR roles of course), department managers make the hiring decisions. HR is there to support the process.

HR does pre-selection -- this is exactly when unwanted CVs go to the waste basket.

Yep, anyone who does not know this generally doesnt get how much the HR idiots can prescreen wonderful candidates because they didnt match the keywords.

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

#254

Post by anologwintermut » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:14 AM UTC

etler wrote: post #246

anologwintermut wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we missed the key point that he implied he was a women with kids. Some set of hiring managers assumed a mother with kids would likely focus more on family then career. That assumption may or may not be dumb. It's certainly correctable if there is serious statistical evidence it is wrong (unlike someone just being a bigot). That wouldn't help this case though, because the inclusion of kids in the resume was an…

I'd like to see a study of response rates on resume's that are nearly the same, except for the gender, and race implied by the name. I feel like that would provide a pretty good measure to figure out how discriminatory our jobs system is.

They've done them, the results strongly imply discrimination. There's been some criticism of the methodology though. I believe there was a chapter in Freakonomics criticizing the "black name" resume studies (though I cannot remember the criticism). With some of the gender ones the claim is that the career trajectories were gender atypical when the names were switched and hence looked odd. I.e. that if you took a resume of a women and a man and swapped the names, the male named female resume would get lower responses.

A more salient question is why there is discrimination on gender in hiring. Is it outright sexism or is it discounting for the fact that a women is far more likely to exit her career to have kids or reduce her hours. The answer radically effect how you fix the problem.

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

#255

Post by anologwintermut » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:15 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #188

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…

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 vita…

Did he give a reason ?

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

#256

Post by jessedhillon » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:27 AM UTC

badclient wrote: post #201

ritchiea wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vita…

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. It is a problem when "sexist remark" has a much more vague definition in court than in everyday life.

There's this thing called the reasonable person standard. You should read about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

If you find yourself so embattled with the courts, perhaps you should try and understand the behavior of reasonable people. I have to agree with rayiner -- this sounds like typical male-tech resentment for being called creepy one too many times.

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

#257

Post by ritchiea » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:27 AM UTC

anologwintermut wrote: post #255

ritchiea wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vita…

Did he give a reason ?

He didn't have to, we all understood that he meant he wasn't comfortable cutting back on certain types of speech.

And I'm not trying to be a PC zealot here. I've told and laughed at many an inappropriate joke. But I also have a lot of respect for the idea that you should not make people feel uncomfortable at work and you shouldn't go out of your way to dismiss candidates of a particular gender (or race or class) because you think you would offend that person and you are incapable of not offending them.

Another notable thing about feeling like you can't hire certain people because they will be offended by things you say in the office is that you are making it clear that you have a narrow range of means to express yourself.

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

#258

Post by anotherevan » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:36 AM UTC

anologwintermut wrote: post #169

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 think we missed the key point that he implied he was a women with kids. Some set of hiring managers assumed a mother with kids would likely focus more on family then career. That assumption may or may not be dumb. It's certainly correctable if there is serious statistical evidence it is wrong (unlike someone just being a bigot). That wouldn't help this case though, because the inclusion of kids in the resume was an…

> This is an even stronger single because asking if I have kids in an interview is in fact not legal in most places in the US, so including it your self is making a huge point.

It's not such a huge point if you read the bio at the top of the article and noticed that the author lives in Australia and not just assume he lives in the US.

Mind you, Australia does have similar anti-discrimination laws.

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

#259

Post by OGC » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 1:40 AM UTC

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).

"The studies were not in software engineering"

Worthless comment then, carry on.

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

#260

Post by jlgreco » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 2:12 AM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #186

Scaevolus wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

With dramatically higher demand for women programmers, would it be permissible to pay women far more than men? How would this affect gender relations in the workplace?

Assuming that currently 20% of programmers are women, would 60% of the current programmer population (or 75% of current male programmers) have to go unemployed until more women had entered the workforce? Following from my first question: if we think paying men and women differently is a-okay, what would this 25/75 split do to the salary of male programmers? How would this affect gender relations in the workplace?

Would these same quotas apply to universities as well? How would the market react to universities making cuts in graduation rates to accommodate occasional fluctuations in the woman student population?

What kind of grace periods and permitted lag would be allowed? If I fired a woman, would I have to fire a man to make up for it that same day? That same week? That same month? Would I just have to refill that position with another woman? What if I decided to eliminate that role entirely?

I am not convinced that you have put thought into your proposal. It makes for a good sound bite and I don't doubt that your intentions are noble, but it is not a good idea.