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Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

thomasbell.co.uk

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Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#41

Post by rfnslyr »

ForHackernews wrote: post #37
rfnslyr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? Humanities studies are greatly dominated by women, tech is dominated by men, and so is every other field out there dominated by either/or.

> Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics. At a societal level, we'll all benefit by having more people working in fields where they're most productive. > so is every other field out there dominated by either/or. That's not true at all. Some fi…

At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics.

If the simple existence of a statistic (men dominating tech) puts you away, then that's your own fault.

Med school is 50/50, great, that's an extremely difficult pursuit, clearly women are capable of handling it.

I really truly think it's because IT is not interesting. 90% of it is boring as fuck, working with legacy code at corporations.

How many tech jobs do you honestly think exist in this brand new javascript-scale-haskell everything small company fantasy wonder world? How many of those people, that even know this niche exists, are women? I casually talk about the scene to outside people and 99% of people have no idea what silicon valley is, or what a startup is. To them, computers are just a super boring corporate job, and they don't really know what's required.

This field really just isn't as intrinsically interesting as others. If you're interested in bits and bytes and numbers and problem solving and code and all the other great things that come with this field, good for you. None of this is lodged in the natural world, it's all virtual. Objectively, anything to do with the natural world (medicine, most sciences (life sci/bio/chem) are far more interesting). I think another part of the problem is schooling. In schools you get a PROPER science education, so it's easier to see the merits, versus being in a programming class taught by someone who really doesn't know the first thing about programming. What do you think the women will choose?

It takes a very special kind of person to get hooked on computers and programming.

Look at the field from an external point of view. You can't honestly tell me it looks like the most interesting thing in the world given peoples experience and exposition to it.

I'm really not surprised that there is a gender gap in this field because I really don't see anything that could draw a casual outside observer in unless they already have their foot in the door, which will probably be of their own accord anyways.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#42

Post by rayiner »

philwelch wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender equalization in law happened through the 1980's and 1990's, at a time when salaries at large law firms were dramatically increasing due to the limited supply of graduates from which large law firms source their entry-level hires. The key difference is that law schools, being generally very progressive places, took aggressive steps to fill their classes with approximately equal numbers of men and women. And…

And if CS programs set aside 50% of their slots for women as well, you might see similar results. There remains very little that employers can do about it though.

Law schools would not make a change like that without buy-in from the employers that allow them to justify their tuition. If tech companies bought in the same way, I think you'd quickly see a change in how schools fill their classes.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#43

Post by rfnslyr »

ForHackernews wrote: post #33
fantnn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still suggesting that firms are somehow obligated to go out of their way to hire females due to some misguided sense of morality. Putting in extra effort to find a female developers would cost money that smaller firms may not have.

Above, you agreed with the statement "You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it." EDIT: My mistake, that was a different user. Making the effort to consider qualified women is part of actively working towards it. Maybe it does cost some small amount of extra money, but if you refuse to make even the minor effort of, say, posting to a women's tech board[0] then you are part of the problem. [0] e.g. ht…

That's fair and I agree. When we near the point where we're throwing out perfectly good candidates in favour of female candidates strictly because of gender, then we have another problem.

We should work towards being more fair individuals and looking at both genders with the same criteria in mind, gender aside while also tapping into female development resources like the one you mentioned.

I also believe we should introduce tech at an earlier age, say in high school, because right now tech is grossly misrepresented versus the other sciences which women have no problem going into.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#44

Post by natch »

rfnslyr wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your viewpoint is predicated on an assumption: that equality is the equilibrium state of human society. In such a world where this equilibrium exists, there is no need for "ideology and affirmative action" because any affirmative actions to create inequality will be erased through the passage of time as the world returns to the equilibrium of equality. The problem with this attitude is that it is utterly unwarranted,…

Sorry I have to disagree with this. I abide by one rule: if the candidate is good, they get hired. I am not a sexist nor do I discriminate, nor am I guilty of putting women down in any way, shape, or form, especially since before my time so I fail to see how the burden is on my shoulders, and why I should hire someone purely based on their genitalia. I am in no way responsible for what happened before my time. The re…

Presumably when you say GOOD you mean good for the position. If you take a holistic view, that metric should encompass things like how they will work on the team, whether they will fit in, and even whether they will be good for the company.

If your company gets measured (as it will) by future prospective job candidates beyond just this one hire, one thing they will look at is the health of the company (see the article).

A lack of diversity in a company does not say anything conclusive, but it can be a red flag.

As a very low level hiring manager (which it sounds like you may be, very low level) you don't have to think about this much. As you ascend to higher levels, the environment you are providing for employees, and consideration of how each employee you choose contributes to that environment, becomes more of a consideration as to whether someone is not only GOOD at what they do, but also GOOD for the company.

And if someone with an overwhelming advantage in the job marketplace gets edged out in a tie-breaker amongst equal candidates, cry me a river; they will be just fine.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#45

Post by Tzunamitom »

rfnslyr wrote: post #2

What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? I don't get this whole gender thing. If statistically less women apply to a STEM degree, or tech related job, how is it the fault of "white males"? White male guilt at it's finest if you ask me. If you actively see discrimination, do something about it. I actually work with a team that is 90%…

> Why try to force equality? Am I missing something?

OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action.

Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things:

1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ. Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...

2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity.

Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#46

Post by Tzunamitom »

philwelch wrote: post #25

> This is especially surprising considering that many of their partners are ex-Accenture, a company that in my experience placed a strong emphasis on recruiting and promoting female talent at the highest levels. The minute someone throws out Accenture as a positive example of how to run a business is the minute they lose their own credibility. It turns out it's easy to hire whoever you want if competence is not a req…

Ignoring your unfair generalisations about Accenture employees, I made no assertion that Accenture as a whole was a good way to run a business.

In the 3 years I worked there, there was a lot that I disagreed with, but one thing they did well was their effort to drive towards greater gender equality.

[edit typo]

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#47

Post by Tzunamitom »

devonbarrett wrote: post #17

By the title I expected a piece of satire. Titling an article about sexism with 'Be a Man' probably is not the best way to go about advocating equality.

One might even suggest that the title is at once playful, satirical, arresting, and a little ironic.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#48

Post by philwelch »

Tzunamitom wrote: post #46
philwelch wrote: post #25

> This is especially surprising considering that many of their partners are ex-Accenture, a company that in my experience placed a strong emphasis on recruiting and promoting female talent at the highest levels. The minute someone throws out Accenture as a positive example of how to run a business is the minute they lose their own credibility. It turns out it's easy to hire whoever you want if competence is not a req…

Ignoring your unfair generalisations about Accenture employees, I made no assertion that Accenture as a whole was a good way to run a business. In the 3 years I worked there, there was a lot that I disagreed with, but one thing they did well was their effort to drive towards greater gender equality. [edit typo]

That's not too surprising, as that's the kind of thing that impresses politicians and MBA's. In the real world, where delivering results is more important than checking off political boxes, tech companies have to work extremely hard just to hire the best people, so that's not a luxury they have.

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#49

Post by Tzunamitom »

sliverstorm wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But anyway, even if the world was completely un-sexist and genders were perfectly equal, would we not expect simply due to chance to see some boards with 14 members of only one gender? A board of 14 with only males does not logically prove that there must exist discrimination. It's also true that we as humans aren't limited to only acting on provable logical conclusions, but are entitled to make inferences from fac…

My point has nothing to do with whether this particular board was established under discrimination, and everything to do with the author's notion that a company cannot be successful without women on the board. I have nothing against women on the board, but I think it is intuitively obvious that neither gender is a prerequisite for success.

Not wanting to challenge your intuition, but my notion was that company success is strongly correlated to women on the board and gender equality.

Hopefully the research linked in my email at the bottom of the original post might prompt you to reconsider your intuitive position (one that is unfortunately shared by many people).

Re: Be a Man and Stand Up for Gender Equality

#50

Post by Tzunamitom »

rfnslyr wrote: post #15
mewwts wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it. There's a huge difference.

I totally agree, and OP went about this the dumbest way. Didn't go through with a job because it's all white males... so he's going to be replaced with another of the type he's actively trying to avoid. Why not volunteer at some womens development workshops/conferences/classes/groups? I've seen them around.

Perhaps it was dumb. Perhaps not. I made a judgement call that I'd be able to make more of a difference to the company culture by sending a blunt email to the senior management team than I would by joining the company's middle management where I'd have very little influence anyway.

My hope is that they will implement some changes based on a. concern about their public image, and b. evidence that they are losing qualified candidates as a result of their imbalance. It is often the case with companies like this that many people on the inside would like to see a change but lack the evidence and support necessary to gain widespread support for it.

If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and yes I am involved in other activities to promote gender equality (both men and women's equality), both inside and outside work.

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