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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

#311

Post by whiterabbit2 »

Jach wrote: post #153
anaptdemise wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As this Hungarian illustrates, getting the government involved to guarantee these sorts of "anti-discrimination" rules can lead to a very bad outcome: http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/01/09/this-is-why-i-dont-g... (Too bad the guy's blog has died, he had some more good rants on it that made me very glad not to live in Hungary.)

I looked up Hungarian laws, and the problem is not the government involvement, but that there is a huge difference between maternity and paternity leave (3 years vs 5 days). This somehow doesn't fit "anti-discrimination", as it's quite the opposite.

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

#312

Post by jack-r-abbit »

whiterabbit2 wrote: post #305
mathattack wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy enough to fix for screening for gender, but it's much harder to fix the screening for age, because people like to see a sequence of activities. At the very least, work experience years comes across. When people leave off graduation dates, that throws up a red flag too. The harder part is how do you turn off the bias once the interviews start? This was an issue with many orchestras - they ultimately made the…

For tech companies it shouldn't be a problem to interview candidates blindly. Give some questions as written tests and coding assignments. If talking is necessary, there is software changing voice pitch. Skype has a plugin like that. Just interview a candidate sitting in another room, streaming what they write and use the same voice settings for all candidates. My impression that nobody uses written tests because com…

The problem with that is similar to "online dating". Sure you can learn a lot about a person without ever seeing or hearing them... but you don't really know a person until you have spent a portion of time actually interacting with them. If you are hiring a person to be part of a team, you need that person to gel with the team at least on some level. I don't think you could get an accurate representation of that if you can't hear that person's true voice, see their mannerisms, etc. I've been in situations where our team was down to two candidates that had various strengths/weaknesses but for the most part were equally qualified. Either one of them was just as likely as the other to be able to perform the work we needed someone to do. Is it wrong to go with the person that we felt would fit into the team the best?

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

#313

Post by prodigal_erik »

rayiner wrote: post #252
Camillo wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gro…

If I had any other time-consuming hobby and started phoning it in at work, the company could tell me I may be dismissed if I don't shape up. Only parents get the nuclear option, and thankfully most of them don't abuse the possibility very heavily.

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

#314

Post by mattstreet »

ams6110 wrote: post #233
Falling3 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If they did read further, the next thing they saw (as politeness declared at the time) was a little personal information, and that declared I was married with kids."

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.

He isn't an American. Not all countries have the same laws.

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

#315

Post by DominikR »

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.

One thing that can be done to improve the situation is to require candidates to NOT include gender, age, family status etc. in their resume.

Some companies like Google do this (link: http://www.google.com/jobs/students/joining/)

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

#316

Post by whiterabbit2 »

Someone wrote: post #152
cpeterso wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC interviews

Even that is not 100% watertight: http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php

I tried my own comments from this page. The majority gives me around 70-85% male (I'm a feminine female). But adding one comment which was talking "childcare" and such gave me "only" a weak male (saying it might indicate European). It's so stereotypical. Interesting also how it divides people into males, females and Europeans (the "weak" versions).

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

#317

Post by pinaceae »

DominikR wrote: post #315
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.

One thing that can be done to improve the situation is to require candidates to NOT include gender, age, family status etc. in their resume. Some companies like Google do this (link: http://www.google.com/jobs/students/joining/ )

and their first name too? Lisa...

and then there are languages, like Nordics and Slavic, where the last name reveals your gender - Sigmundsdottir (daughter of Sigmund), Politkowskaja (f) vs. Politkowski (m), etc.

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

#318

Post by rayiner »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #313
rayiner wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gro…

If I had any other time-consuming hobby and started phoning it in at work, the company could tell me I may be dismissed if I don't shape up. Only parents get the nuclear option, and thankfully most of them don't abuse the possibility very heavily.

That's because parenthood ensures that companies have future customers, while hobbies don't. Facebook stock isn't worth much if all the 13-25 year olds that buy the crap advertisers peddle on it is a shrinking demographic!

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

#319

Post by prodigal_erik »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #299
JulianMorrison wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You forgot one: - Cause some coworkers to resent a person for being hired just to fill a quota rather than on merit.

This. Nothing would cement widespread sexism more than forcing everyone to work around a highly visible influx of unqualified women. We've already seen outsourcing reinforce racism, as bottom-feeding scammers exploit clients' inability to screen out unqualified contract development shops, and the rank and file here assume there are no smart people from that country simply because they only got to work with the bench warmers hired at random by the lowest bidders.

If you want 50% of qualified candidates to be women, you have to find the nerdy girls in middle school with the aptitude and give them the latitude to develop the obsession the way boys can. Nobody who starts in college because they're chasing dollar signs is going to be very good.

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

#320

Post by DominikR »

pinaceae wrote: post #317
DominikR wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that can be done to improve the situation is to require candidates to NOT include gender, age, family status etc. in their resume. Some companies like Google do this (link: http://www.google.com/jobs/students/joining/ )

and their first name too? Lisa... and then there are languages, like Nordics and Slavic, where the last name reveals your gender - Sigmundsdottir (daughter of Sigmund), Politkowskaja (f) vs. Politkowski (m), etc.

Don't be negative, all I am saying is that there are things that can be done to improve the situation, and there are many companies out there that are actively trying.

I wouldn't know that Sigmundsdottir would be revealing the gender, and many other wouldn't either. (I'm not saying that it can't be improved even further)

Edit: I have a slavic last name that doesn't reveal my gender (on the balkans, last names are the same for both male/female)

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