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

#281

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:29 AM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #194

alxndr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, even in English, a woman who you're engaged to is normally referred to as a "fiancée", whereas a man you're engaged to would be a "fiancé". Similarly with né and née, for people who have changed their names.

I've never heard that before. And the searches I just did for it seem to reference "fiancée" as just a side note. It seems to me that "fiancé" is most commonly used to mean either. I for one was not confused one bit by the original statement.

Well now you know. It's a French noun, and most French nouns that refer to people add an extra "e" in the feminine form. It even works for a lot of names (Jean vs. Jeanne).

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

#282

Post by usefulcat » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:30 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #236

ams6110 wrote: post #233

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…

I think that asking such questions in an interview in the US can make it easier for people to sue if they don't get hired.

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

#283

Post by acjohnson55 » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:33 AM UTC

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 are some pretty obvious ways to fix it. A basic step would be people actually owning up to their own biases. At the very least, then people could better detect their unconscious biases and override them with objectivity.

I don't think that would be enough, but we'd be far better off if we could get to that point.

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

#284

Post by badclient » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:39 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #227

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the way things are going, it is not an irrational or unreasonable fear that something you (as a man or a woman) do/say is going to offend someone (man or woman) and land you in trouble. This has nothing to do with man vs woman. Badclient said nothing of men or women... just "sexist remark". Nor was there any mention of anything that would fall under any reasonable definition of misogyny . Your response only furt…

To be fair he wrote one line which in the context of the thread could easily be perceived as defending sexist hiring practices. He may not have said "man or woman" but he responded to a comment I made where I described a manager of mine who was fond of making sexist jokes and refused to take women seriously as job candidates. In his position if I wanted to make a more general point about the court system I would have…

I included exactly what I was responding to in my original comment in italics.

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

#285

Post by jack-r-abbit » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #244

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be really awesome if when people read/hear stuff that can easily be perceived in more than one way... they went with the better choice than the worst one. Not everyone perceives things the same way.. so why always assume they meant it the bad way you perceived it rather than finding out what they meant first? I think a lot of this trouble would go away. Also, badclient wrote exactly one sentence: It is a pro…

If he wasn't responding to my comment then a general comment about the court system is off topic. I didn't bring up the court system. It would be strange for me to assume he is veering off topic rather than commenting on the situation I described.

The comment appears to be in response to you using the phrase "sexist remark"... and it appears that badclient believes there is a problem with that phrase being too vague. In the context of your comment, it was pretty clear to me that this vagueness is of some concern to badclient because that could land a person in trouble one day for doing something that was not an issue the week before. I think the difference that might be tripping you up is that you were speaking of a specific "man violates rights of woman" situation but badclient was talking of a more general "person violates rights of person" situation. Some people like to pretend that this is only a "man violates woman" topic... when really it goes both ways. Of course it is entirely possible that you don't believe it goes both ways... but then you and I would have a totally different issue... one that I'd opt out of discussing.

EDIT: "both ways" should probably be "all ways" since all parties involved could be the same gender.

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

#286

Post by babby » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:43 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #56

cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #23

I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get addressing me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc. Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as…

Well, you might just be a male fan of MLP. It happens a lot nowadays! I think it is a good thing it is harder to discriminate people on names, colors, etc. They are all superficial and have nothing to do with sexuality anyway. I think in the end just too many people care what chemical is more prominent in your body between testosterone and estrogen.

>MLP >on my hacker news

I feel a little sick.

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

#287

Post by gohrt » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:44 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #154

king_jester wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have a better idea. Instead of forcing companies to change using an incompeteny bureaucracy, invest in operations that commit to gender-blind hiring practices, and get rich when those companies hire better people and are vastly more successful.

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

#288

Post by jack-r-abbit » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:45 AM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #281

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard that before. And the searches I just did for it seem to reference "fiancée" as just a side note. It seems to me that "fiancé" is most commonly used to mean either. I for one was not confused one bit by the original statement.

Well now you know. It's a French noun, and most French nouns that refer to people add an extra "e" in the feminine form. It even works for a lot of names (Jean vs. Jeanne).

Yes. The footnote I saw referred to that spelling as "the French spelling"... so (since I'm not French or in France) I think I'll continue to use the other one like every other time I've seen it.

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

#289

Post by badclient » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:45 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #257

anologwintermut wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) beca…

But I also have a lot of respect for the idea that you should not make people feel uncomfortable at work

You can have a lot of respect for something and still have a hard time achieving it. You're suggesting that people that make crude jokes around a sex about that sex don't respect that sex. I find that assumption to be unfair and false.

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

#290

Post by gohrt » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #274

nostrademons wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fix for that is to work from the bottom up, not by intentionally ruining a bsiness by hiring less effective people at the time.

Note that "women aren't represented in the executive levels" isn't a significant issue, not for the vast majority of women or men. Very few people are executives, and it's not important to 95% of the population what the gender of the executives is. The majority of women have more in common with the majority of men that are non-executives, than they do with the few women that are executives.