3 ms·
I have a friend who did exactly this, giving his daughter a gender neutral name to help her avoid discrimination. It makes a lot of sense to me and would guess
by rurp 7y ago
I have a friend who did exactly this, giving his daughter a gender neutral name to help her avoid discrimination. It makes a lot of sense to me and would guess this is not uncommon.
It also reminds of a study I read about a while back where the researches tried sending out resumes that were all identical except that half had very common names and half had names that are more commonly African American. Probably unsurprisingly, the first set of names received more interviews.
- minikites 7y agohttps://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 >To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase.
- belorn 7y agoJust remember that there are similar studies going both way depending on context. For job resumes you would want a male name for a slightly higher interview count, while in any interaction with the legal system you want a female name to get better results from custody battles or when accused of a crime. In school-parent relation a female name is perceived as a better parent than a male, while at the doctor it depend on the gender of the doctor. Most psychologists are female so a female patient name gives a small benefit, with the opposite being true for specialties where the majority of doctors are male.