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> Yes, underrepresentation of the population is literally the definition of bias. It's literally not. Men account for 90% of convictions for homicide and othe

> Yes, underrepresentation of the population is literally the definition of bias. It's literally not. Men account for 90% of convictions for homicide and other serious forms of violence in the US, and the overwhelming majority of countries abroad. Is that evidence of overwhelming misandry and bias in criminal justice? There's been demonstration of some bias, IIRC men tend to get 40-60% longer sentences. But that's nowhere near enough to account for this disparity. The reality is men do commit more violence than women and the disparity of men in prison for violence so this overrepresentation of men is not the product of bias, but rather men's own decisions. Similarly, women make up the majority of professions like speech pathology, education, publishing with some of these over 90% female. Do we conclude that this is because of rampant bias against men? Perhaps, but in order to prove that we'd have to prove that these institutions prefer female applicants over male applicants. A non-bias explanation is that 90% of applicants are female, because 90% of people who want to go into these jobs are women. Not only is underrepresentation not evidence of bias, the lack of underrepresentation does not absolve a group of bias. For instance, say a tech company decided it wanted to have an engineering workforce representative of the general population with respect to gender. 20% of the applications it gets are from women, so the company randomly throws away 75% of the male applications to make it so that an equal number of people go on to the phone screen, and subsequent on-site. This produces an engineering workforce that is perfectly representative of the population's gender distribution. But it is overwhelmingly biased against men and in favor of women. Obviously real-world tech companies are rarely this extreme - I've personally only seen OKRs calling for 33% at most. The point is, force equal or closer-to-equal outcomes in spite of unequal decisions made by people often entails the creation of bias, rather than its elimination. Do you really think that a company can achieve 50% women in tech without biasing their interview process in favor of women? The only company that even gets close to 50/50 practices explicit quota hiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThoughtWorks#Hiring_and_diversity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThoughtWorks#Hiring_and_divers... Ultimately, at this point I think your conception that bias has a 1:1 relationship with representation relative to general population is fundamentally different from mine in a way that makes it difficult to productively explore the value of affirmative action in the hiring process.

omar_a1 7y ago
>Do you really think that a company can achieve 50% women in tech without biasing their interview process in favor of women? I strongly recommend looking up the word "bias" in the dictionary. Systemic and institutional bias in tech hiring isn't disproven by of the existence of female-dominated fields. Yes, some fields are female dominated while others are male-dominated. (Such a revelation!) It sounds like you're angling for the "male nurses are oppressed by the matriarchy!" trope, or some kind of gender essentialist nonsense. I'll be sure to adjust my insults accordingly, now that you've moved on from blatant racism to sexist dogwhistles. Do go on, I'm curious to see at what point you move on to full-blown misogyny. I'm looking forward to seeing how many words you write insisting that you're not misogynistic either, while making offensive guesses as to the root cause of these biases in hiring.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > I strongly recommend looking up the word "bias" in the dictionary. From the fist Google result [1], "prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair." Representation is not mentioned at all. > Systemic and institutional bias in tech hiring isn't disproven by of the existence of female-dominated fields. Yes, some fields are female dominated while others are male-dominated. (Such a revelation!) The point is, do you think it's valid to say that female dominated fields are biased against men with no evidence for bias aside from the disparity in representation? This is what it seems like you're claiming when you write that underrepresentation relative to the population is the same thing as bias. > It sounds like you're angling for the "male nurses are oppressed by the matriarchy!" trope, or some kind of gender essentialist nonsense. I agree, concluding that male nurses are subject to bias just because they're substantially outnumbered by female nurses is incorrect. But you wrote "underrepresentation of the population is literally the definition of bias." Well, male nurses are substantially underrepresented. If underrepresentation relative to the population is "literally the definition of bias" then it's hard to argue that male nurses aren't subject to bias when they are unambiguously underrepresented. The point is not that male nurses are oppressed - the point is that they aren't oppressed and thus your definition is wrong. Underrepresentation is not bias. An institution can exactly representative of the general population but also immensely biased - like a tech company that threw out 3/4th of male applicants to make tech roles 50% women - and it can be not at all representative of the population and not biased at all - like a hospital that hires 90% female nurses because nurses are 90% women. Prejudice in favor or against one group can occur or not occur regardless of representation relative to the population. 1. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/bias https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/bias

omar_a1 7y ago

>Do you really think that a company can achieve 50% women in tech without biasing their interview process in favor of women? I strongly recommend looking up the word "bias" in the dictionary. Systemic and institutional bias in tech hiring isn't disproven by of the existence of female-dominated fields. Yes, some fields are female dominated while others are male-dominated. (Such a revelation!) It sounds like you're angling for the "male nurses are oppressed by the matriarchy!" trope, or some kind of gender essentialist nonsense. I'll be sure to adjust my insults accordingly, now that you've moved on from blatant racism to sexist dogwhistles. Do go on, I'm curious to see at what point you move on to full-blown misogyny. I'm looking forward to seeing how many words you write insisting that you're not misogynistic either, while making offensive guesses as to the root cause of these biases in hiring.

manfredo 7y ago
> I strongly recommend looking up the word "bias" in the dictionary. From the fist Google result [1], "prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair." Representation is not mentioned at all. > Systemic and institutional bias in tech hiring isn't disproven by of the existence of female-dominated fields. Yes, some fields are female dominated while others are male-dominated. (Such a revelation!) The point is, do you think it's valid to say that female dominated fields are biased against men with no evidence for bias aside from the disparity in representation? This is what it seems like you're claiming when you write that underrepresentation relative to the population is the same thing as bias. > It sounds like you're angling for the "male nurses are oppressed by the matriarchy!" trope, or some kind of gender essentialist nonsense. I agree, concluding that male nurses are subject to bias just because they're substantially outnumbered by female nurses is incorrect. But you wrote "underrepresentation of the population is literally the definition of bias." Well, male nurses are substantially underrepresented. If underrepresentation relative to the population is "literally the definition of bias" then it's hard to argue that male nurses aren't subject to bias when they are unambiguously underrepresented. The point is not that male nurses are oppressed - the point is that they aren't oppressed and thus your definition is wrong. Underrepresentation is not bias. An institution can exactly representative of the general population but also immensely biased - like a tech company that threw out 3/4th of male applicants to make tech roles 50% women - and it can be not at all representative of the population and not biased at all - like a hospital that hires 90% female nurses because nurses are 90% women. Prejudice in favor or against one group can occur or not occur regardless of representation relative to the population. 1. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/bias https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/bias