Live data from Hacker News

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

qz.com

271–280 of 391 posts

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

#271

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.

Easy fix: have one person remove names from resumes, and a second person evaluate them.

Or, if that's too much work, just use affirmative action.

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

#272
post #121

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,…

"I would not call it bigotry, but rather stupidity."

No reason it can't be both. It is stupid, but it's also the dictionary definition of sexism.

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

#273
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even at lower levels. I managed a team of 4 people at Yahoo, and whenever I was replacing someone, we'd send a spec to HR, negotiate a pay grade target to fit the department budget, and wait for the resumes, who'd first been sorted by external recruiters, then been further filtered by internal HR before they landed in my inbox.

This was true even when I managed hiring at a company of 50 people or so. At companies smaller than that, I've usually been the one to have a first look at resumes for my team.

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

#274

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.

The way to fix it is to start a software company and then hire all the overlooked overqualified women on the job market. When people are being stupid like this, it's a market inefficiency; it means that the market price for a woman will be lower than for an equivalently-qualified man. As an entrepreneur, your job is to exploit that market inefficiency and in the process drive wages up to parity.

That's fine to first approximation, but doesn't hold up in the real world, where women have the deck stacked against them in the tech world at every turn. If men are being preferentially chosen over women, then that damages the ability of women to be competitive at the next level.

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

#275
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…

Every study I've seen on outcomes either finds no effect or a negative effect for boys' performance in all-male schooling. It is beneficial to girls, but currently in America all students, boys and girls, perform better when there are more girls in the classroom.

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

#276

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…

If we assume that's the reason, it should be easy to fix: if men start complaining about unprofessional and harassing behavior, there'd no longer be any reason not to hire women.

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

#277
post #139
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.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but you should consider that it's often unwelcome. There are things people think of as compliments to me that aren't things I actually want to hear, particularly from people I don't know.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't have to be so embattled in courts to be concerned about it. Your comment is equivalent to telling someone concerned about getting raped that getting raped is their fault.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also have sex with people they know from work. Should they have it at work? If you can't find something to talk about at work other than how hot some naked woman on tv was last night, they're not giving you enough to do. If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too. If your self-righteousness is because you feel put upon by not being…

>If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too. If someone is uncomfortable with something they should speak up. If someone says they are uncomfortable with something that should be respected (within reason). Its not that hard when everyone just behaves as adults instead of spoiled sheltered children who cannot communicate with each other

I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to speak up so other people can judge whether or not their discomfort qualifies as "reasonable" eyeroll

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

#280

Not to argue that gender bias doesn't exist. But this is not a good study case as he tainted his resume pretty badly from the start. Not being currently employed is a red flag to a lot of employers and gets you immediately discarded. And putting personal information, even if seemingly innocent, triggers the lawsuit avoidance mechanism at a lot of places and immediately gets you discarded.

I'm not sure you really read it closely. The ONLY thing that changed about his resume is the clarifying "Mr.". Whatever faults his resume might have were present before and after, yet the differences in its reception were dramatic.
Post reply on HN