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

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261–270 of 391 posts

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

#261

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.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of HR departments (even the 'best') aren't doing this at all.

My company, Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com), is doing exactly this on a larger scale: we're a marketplace that connects people and employers, but the employers see anonymized versions of each candidate's data/career history.

They request to interview candidates on the platform based on these anonymous profiles. Should the candidate accept, we reveal contact information to both parties and help schedule the interview.

While we're still fairly early stage, we're aiming to expose bias at different points in the hiring process using this approach, and at the very least help employers understand their own biases. Acceptance is the first step to a solution, no?

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your marital status and whether or not you have kids should NOT be on your CV. It's illegal for an employer to even ask about it in an interview.

> It's illegal for an employer to even ask about it in an interview. I think you'd be hard pressed to find such a law. What you will more likely find that it is illegal for an employer to discriminate in hiring based on that information, and an employer asking the question in an interview is quite likely to be used in any lawsuit over alleged discrimination as evidence that they were, in fact, discriminating in hirin…

It likely depends on the country; for all practical purpose, it is illegal to ask this question in Canada.

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

#263
post #198
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may come as a shock to you, but women are not cars.

Of course not. Acknowledging that two things are the same in some ways does not imply that the two things are the same in all ways. Don't be intentionally obtuse.

His quote is damn near the definition of "objectification".

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

#264

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…

> Some set of hiring managers assumed a mother with kids would likely focus more on family then career.

In the present times, some set of managers would assume it for ANY woman of childbearing age. And if a woman doesn't have kids, she's assumed to get pregnant and go on maternity leave.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is one of the two-way street issues. There is real business value to be extracted from exploiting the existing sexism in society, agreed, but in doing so, it also reinforces that existing sexism. It's a vicious cycle of mutually supporting behavior. That is a problem. Denying said value is not necessarily the best solution, but some solution is necessary.

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

#266
Since this is entirely devoid of any discernible facts, it's a little disturbing that this has made it to the front page of HN. When did random assertions become unquestioned truth?

This feels a lot like a sensationalized modern day witch hunt, "Burn the misoginists! Burn the sexists!"

Also, for whatever it's worth, never have I heard "Kim" considered anything but a woman's name.

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

#268
As a father, when I had my first kid, & read a few "Parents" magazines, I was so disheartened to see 99% of the references in articles referring to the parent as the "mom" or "She/her". I said, "WTF! Are fathers not parents!?"

Then, it hit me. As a male engineer, manager, etc... I just got a very small taste of the less than subtle gender biases that exist all around us. That made me appreciate my wife more (who is also an engineer), and all the others who put up with that crap even in this modern day.

This is the only forum I've complained about "Parent's Magazine"'s female gender bias. And, I only do so within a context that shows it's just a lesson in empathy for a much more severe bias in the other direction.

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

#269
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's stating fact. The HR industry is absolutely dominated by females. That's not a matter of opinion.

Human resources people are the ones who negotiate on behalf of the company to get cheap health insurance. They aren't hiring managers.

They nearly always perform the initial sorting of resumes. People in charge of departments or groups (who are usually the ones hiring) are often too busy to sort through 400 resumes.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't claim it is my own observation. I got it from a feminist talking about how maybe the reason men are resisting women's ingress into male-dominated professions is because when women find the traditionally male workplace environment unsatisfactory, they expect the environment to change to suit them.

As a man in a pretty male-dominated profession, (Military) I can say that this is the case. It's exacerbated by blatant sexism, but the biggest rational fear is that women expect the environment to change when they arrive and that this change will be detrimental. The current culture and environment has been tried and proven to work, and they're fearful of a change in that culture impacting success. Having worked with…

Thanks for sharing your perspective. It's especially valuable since you are working in a historically male institution. It'd be interesting if you wrote about more of your experiences and observations on this topic (like a blog post). I would be excited to read it.
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