3 ms·

Unfortunately, there are also many examples that white men have a huge advantage in the hiring process solely because they're white men. This is easily shown by

• reader5000 10y ago
  Actually your links (assuming replicability of the studies etc) just support the claim that "names that conform to the majority culture do better". They do not support your first sentence at all. It is perfectly possible for non-white people to have white names. Your implication that companies demonstrating preference for cultural/class conformity and familiarity is somehow unexpected or "unfortunate" doesn't follow.
  • jakelazaroff 10y ago
    Yes, that's the claim they support, but the "majority culture" that the names signify is "white and male" specifically. You seem to be saying that since people can be given any name there's no way to infer race and gender from a given name, which is ridiculous: of course there's a correlation between a name, race and gender. Look at the top 1000 names from 1995, the next birth year that will be graduating from college en masse. "Jessica" is the top name for girls, while it doesn't even appear in the top 1000 for boys. http://www.babynames.it/top100/1/year-1995.html http://www.babynames.it/top100/1/year-1995.html
    • reader5000 10y ago
      Yes exactly, there is nothing "unfortunate" about the implications of those studies. Also thanks for taking the time to statistically prove "Jessica" is a girl's name for some reason.
      • bbctol 10y ago
        It's unfortunate if you don't have a white man's name...
        • reader5000 10y ago
          I agree, but I don't think it's any more unfortunate than not having a Chinese name in China, Indian name in India, etc. Humans are inherently risk averse, and cultural conformity is an upshot of that. To penalize or otherwise persecute "white males" for having and participating in a culture seems unjust.
          • bbctol 10y ago
            So you're saying we live in a culture that arbitrarily benefits white men, and thus it would be unjust to not arbitrarily benefit them.
            • reader5000 10y ago
              I dont know what you think culture is, but to me culture is just how people generally behave in a particular area, so yes white men generally try to behave in a way that benefits them. Is this wrong?
          • jakelazaroff 10y ago
            To be clear: you are saying that it is not unjust to penalize women and people of color for no reason other than the fact that they're not white men, but it is unjust to penalize white men to compensate for that.
        • LyndsySimon 10y ago
          I'm a white man and my name is Lyndsy. My experiences thus far strongly suggest that success is not tied to having a male-sounding name.
      • jakelazaroff 10y ago
        Premise: names often signify gender and race Premise: in STEM fields, female- and POC-signifying names receive significantly fewer responses to otherwise identical résumés Conclusion: in the hiring process in STEM fields, people are discriminated against based solely on their perceived gender and race That is the literal definition of sexism and racism. How is that not unfortunate or problematic?
• ori_b 10y ago
  The answer to this is anonymized resumes.
  • jakelazaroff 10y ago
    That's only going to fix the first step in the hiring process. The larger issue this shows is that people are biased to believe that women and people of color are less qualified for STEM jobs.
    • wnoise 10y ago
      1. Fixing the first step is important and necessary. 2. Exposure at the next level will normalize the idea that women and non-whites should be given serious consideration in hiring.