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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

#351

Post by teamonkey »

Tichy wrote: post #339
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…

"no women, no sexual harassment suits" Why is it bigot to think that? Seems like a valid concern, can't really blame companies for worrying about that? It's of course a problem, but what is the proper solution?

I would say that the proper solution is don't sexually harass employees.

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

#352

Post by mratzloff »

badclient wrote: post #278
jessedhillon wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's not.

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

#353

Post by Aloisius »

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…

certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team

I've certainly been someone who has looked to hire more women in my engineering departments over the years, but I can't imagine why someone would do it for token reasons. For me it was about increasing diversity of opinion and balancing out the culture so we didn't hire misogynist assholes in the future.

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

#354

Post by jack-r-abbit »

nagrom wrote: post #332
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…

- immediately reduces your competitiveness with people outside your legal jurisdiction. (And software engineering can be done anywhere.) - reinforces prejudice at an everyday level as the group whoa re being quota-ed down resent losing their jobs to people who can't do them. - sends a signal that excellence doesn't matter and that what you are is more important than who you are. In a list of really silly suggestions…

Quotas: Because the best way to fight discrimination is with more discrimination.

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

#355

Post by kaitai »

jessedhillon wrote: post #256
badclient wrote: post #201

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.

How is "typical male-tech resentment for being called creepy" functionally any different for the female job candidate?

"No, he's not sexist, he just doesn't like women... for good reason!" "No, he's not sexist, he just can't talk to women... for good reason!" "No, he's not sexist, he just has seizures when he sees the color pink, and women are more likely to wear pink."

Who cares? The woman still doesn't get the job.

The excuses are equivalent to a student saying they deserve an A for trying hard and having extenuating circumstances though they can't actually do what they're graded on.

People take "sexist" and "racist" to describe intent. I don't give a s(*& about your intent. It's the effect that's relevant.

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

#356

Post by jack-r-abbit »

Tichy wrote: post #340
whiterabbit2 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"she's assumed to get pregnant and go on maternity leave" Would you say that assumptions is completely unfounded? What percentage of women don't have kids?

I don't think people are necessarily saying that this assumption is or is not unfounded. But it should not be grounds for not hiring someone.

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

#357

Post by pyre »

anaptdemise wrote: post #245
scythe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To their detriment. In a world where sexism is still a huge problem, it seems that forcing students into a monosexual environment would only contribute to stunting their social development even more. Compare, for example, the relative incidence of sexism in a heavily male field like programming or philosophy with the amount of sexism in a gender-integrated field like biology. This idea of separating students by gend…

The reason I did not link to a specific article is that there are so many on both sides of the debate. However, my experience and the experience of my female friends that underwent similar education are all positive on both sides. Also, I am willing to bet that the top US schools are mostly private and mostly single-sex or segregated. They are in my area.

Well, the choice doesn't have to be between a good single-sex school or a crappy co-ed school.

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

#358

Post by jack-r-abbit »

kaybe wrote: post #335
anaptdemise wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More of an insensitive libertine than a sexist. I cannot control what other people say, think or do. I can only control how I react to those situations. This makes it crucial to self sensor being offended more than being offensive. I agree with a lot of what this thread is about, but also am aware that overcompensation is also present. Being offended to a point as to intend to change someones behavior is a form of ex…

Well, if the comments are not different for men and women - as in, you're not actually trying to say something not in the words ( winkwink ) and it's appropriate for the level of relation, and if you respect if someone tells you some comment was not so great, you should be fine with most woman of the technical inclination, I'd say. It's a subtle thing, really. One person can make remarks about women and shoes and it'…

It really is about what your real opinions and intentions are.

Perhaps step one should be "find out their real opinion and intention". But too often people just go straight to "thermo-nuclear melt down".

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

#359

Post by jack-r-abbit »

boyter wrote: post #336
klipt wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that metric, car insurance companies are also sexist - they charge individual men more because stereotypically men are riskier. Of course, that stereotype is based on data, but so is the stereotype that women take more time off when they have children. Why is it legal to discriminate based on data in some situations but not others? I think the only solution is to remove the logical justification for discrimination…

I have always wondered if insurance companies had the data to show that people of Asian decent (for example) have more car accidents, could they jack up their insurance premiums?

No. That would be racist. There are all sorts of protected groups. Men is not one of them.

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

#360

Post by kstenerud »

yaddayadda wrote: post #131
untog wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.

Indeed! Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

Unfortunately, their software is broken. It goes through the test, and then the post test questions (I strongly prefer X, etc) just keep repeating over and over. You can't actually complete a test.
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