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Are gender quotas good for business?

economist.com

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Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#41

Post by AnIdiot »

ChrisSD wrote: post #14
m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

With respect, I think what you just wrote is statistical nonsense. If your ultimate selection from a pool is heavily biased towards an irrelevant fact (gender) then countering that bias can lead to a better selection.

That's true. But consider that in some majors such as software engineering there are 5 times as many men as women. If you try to hire women, your pool will be so much smaller you'll almost certainly choose worse candidates.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#42

Post by AnIdiot »

ncphillips wrote: post #39
AnIdiot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that assumes you can select the best candidate from a pool. Feminists argue that there is bias that prevents this. However studies on the gender pay gap reveal that there's very little bias and most differences can be explained by education, experience, job choice, hours worked, etc. More recently psychological differences between men and women have been shown to contribute to the pay gap.[1] My opinion is…

Why assume technical skill in one area is the only variable in determining merit?

I didn't do that. Merit is meant broadly to encompass many things.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#43

Post by kypro »

lnsru wrote: post #17

I remember 2nd term math lecture. There were students from different engineering disciplines. There were 600 students with ~15 females among them. Some years later situation is no different: ~100 people on the floor, 5 females here: 2 secretaries, 2 export specialists and senior researcher with PhD degree. Where find suitable candidates for these quotes when women avoid technical stuff at university level?

Seems the answer to this more and more is to discourage men and encourage women. I wonder personally if men and women just have different interests. I worry that we're perhaps pushing men and women into jobs they're unhappy with than if just left to their own devices?

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#44

Post by AviationAtom »

tomhoward wrote: post #22
mirimir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paywall? I see no paywall.

Some people do, evidently. There's a limit on articles per month, at least in some regions, and maybe other restrictions in different regions.

Obligatory interesting read on the science that goes into paywalls: http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/after-years-of-testing-the-...

Side-note: WSJ is the only news source I feel is worthy of purchasing, as a student subscription is only $4/mo

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#45

Post by blackbrokkoli »

Is there an idea where to go with these quotas in the long run? I mean as I understand it, the numbers are just pulled out of thin air.

So we have a company, following the however implemented rules and has, let's say has 60% of group A and 40% of B on their board.

But maybe the ideal quota is 70% / 30%. Or 10% / 90%. Or the standard deviation is so high that there is a high probability that everything from 20 % / 80% to 70% / 30% was achieved without any bias but just because of differntly distributed skillsets. Point is, by setting a quota like that without any research, you're gonna end up with one group having it statistically harder to get their well deserved board place as the other, which is the problem that we're trying to fight in the first place, right? And now it is locked in stone, because abandoning the quota would have big political implications.

I understand that it is an attractive short term fix and that we might not have good other solutions, but where are we going with it?

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#46

Post by m1el »

ncphillips wrote: post #36
m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

Humans aren’t cogs in a machine. Our value to an organization is not absolute and based solely on our technical proficiency in a single area. An individuals value is relative to the team. Adding another programmer to my company would be less valuable then adding a salesperson. Similarly, adding people with diverse perspectives is more valuable then hiring only people that grew up in the same city, at our income level…

> Humans aren’t cogs in a machine.

Humans aren't gender either. Doing gender quotas reduces candidates to their gender.

> An assumption I suspect you’re making is that we already have THE correct fitness function.

> They aren’t just trying to filter the fitness function, they’re trying to improve it.

Ohh, no. My assumption is that current hiring is not perfect, but gender quotas are waaay worse. Gender-blind hiring would be better than both.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#47

Post by dijit »

dazzawazza wrote: post #40

I love the idea that there is a scarcity of "golden skirts" that make this too hard. It presupposes that the current male members are all "golden trousers", the cream of the crop, the best of the best. I've met many many board members over the years and they are often very unimpressive. I'm sure we can find some equally unimpressive women to replace them! Better still anyone with even a modicum of talent would do!

I have a different take;

If we suppose a meritocratic hiring process is the best way forward, and that girls are equal to boys (and only considering those genders (if we surmise that there are more)):

Then, if we take the stance that there has been historic bias against girls then it leads to them not having the experience to be in the same category as boys.

It's not about "all guys being good", it's that historically girls have not necessarily had the same opportunity to gain experience and learn. (Except for the most dedicated or those who went to shops that did not practice any kind of discrimination). This leads to a small pot of experienced girls but a large pot of experienced guys.

If you hire "the most qualified candidate" you'll end up with mostly guys because guys have had the opportunity to work unfettered, and if you have a quota to hire more women and want someone experienced, then you're competing against many in a small pool of experienced women.

--

EDIT: I should add that I haven't read the article; but the above is a topic I think about often in the context of discrimination and its role in the future. I don't believe in hiring quotas, I believe the problem should be fixed at its root- But this is not the current topic- and I would kindly ask those who downvote me to argue their points if they wish me to be more understanding.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#48

Post by repolfx »

codingdave wrote: post #24

Before the comments go too far down a rabbit-hole, I encourage everyone to respond to the article instead of answering the question in the headline. The article is talking about boards, not employees, and states that there is no causation proven, despite some correlations found in Europe after they required quotas on company boards.

I was surprised and encouraged to see that the Economist actually cited the papers they were discussing - this seems new, and progress. Way too often, news outlets refer to "studies" or "a study" without making it easy to find out what studies were actually cited.

I'll queue up the studies to read later, but I am skeptical. I've looked at studies that claimed quotas for women in boards = more profit before and without fail, they weren't controlling for confounding variables. Usually it was as simple as "companies in Norway do better than companies in Saudi Arabia, look at the gender differences!" which is of course totally invalid. Unfortunately the way governments have forced women into boards via legislative fiat means it's very hard to control for the pre-existing economic state of countries: you'd need to compare two economies that were basically the same except for gender differences, or compare the same country before and after and then try to control for all other changes in the world economy, which is very hard.

The article is quite balanced about the limits of these studies though. Which is good.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#49

Post by AnIdiot »

ChrisSD wrote: post #8
michaelgv wrote: post #4

I’ve always said to hire the people who can do what we need as a business, regardless of their gender

Which is a noble sentiment but simply doesn't happen in the business world (or in many other places). So the hard question is, how do you effectively encourage business to choose the best people regardless of gender? Some have tried blind interviews but these are very hard to do properly and effectively. A 40% quota is another way to push business into looking beyond gender.

> Which is a noble sentiment but simply doesn't happen in the business world (or in many other places).

On the contrary, all the evidence I've seen points to discrimination being a very small part of the gender pay gap.

The problem is that men and women are different.[1] So it becomes very difficult to even measure if women are being discriminated against much or are just different to men.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep...

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#50

Post by repolfx »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #45

Is there an idea where to go with these quotas in the long run? I mean as I understand it, the numbers are just pulled out of thin air. So we have a company, following the however implemented rules and has, let's say has 60% of group A and 40% of B on their board. But maybe the ideal quota is 70% / 30%. Or 10% / 90%. Or the standard deviation is so high that there is a high probability that everything from 20 % / 80%…

No, the "problem" they're trying to solve is that women want more power and money. Have you noticed how pushes for "diversity" always ignore jobs that are dangerous and unskilled? Brickies are 95%+ male, you don't read about the importance of setting quotas for female bricklayers do you? Primary age teaching is essentially a female only job at this point, we don't see governments imposing quotas for male teachers.

Board seats and other senior management roles however get enormous pressure from feminist campaign groups - because that's where the money and power is.

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