8 ms·

Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female employees so they can talk about their careers and how to advance and get promoted. I don't know, due

Where I work the director has a monthly lunch with female employees so they can talk about their careers and how to advance and get promoted. I don't know, due to lack of experience, but I assume this is beneficial to one's career. Presumably benefiting careers is why they're doing it. And yet, it feels like sexism to me. Women get an explicit benefit that men don't. Women are also explicitly privileged in the hiring process and higher ups are rewarded based on the number of women they employ, hire, and promote. This isn't a conspiracy theory but an explicitly articulated and documented process. Even before that, in college, we had events for women who code, women in STEM, career opportunities for women, etc. I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. I am not all men, so the fact that men have better representation in upper levels is meaningless to me as an individual. The fact that my female peers have a monthly meeting with higher-ups to discuss how they get promoted and I don't get that isn't as meaningless. On top of all that, I also know that if I were to ever suggest this was sexism or wrong in any way using my real name or at work, I'd fully expect to be fired and reviled by my coworkers as a deplorable sexist. My point in writing all this is just to say that I would much prefer my company stay dispassionate and neutral and try to treat everyone fairly. I don't really support the company taking up political, social, or ideological agendas and using them to make decisions about what happens at work.

tuesdayrain 6y ago
That is absolutely sexism. It deeply bothers me that some people think tech must be exactly 50% male/female, and anything else is inherent sexism. It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.
- lsiebert 6y ago
  If there are provable differences that effect performance, by all means cite them. But it's more likely that unseen bias affects hiring and promotions. Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math... Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-...
  - duckmysick 6y ago
    > Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring This one says it doesn't: https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/domestic-policy/beta-report-going-blind-see-more-clearly https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/domestic-policy/beta-repo... > What we found is that de-identifying applications at the shortlisting stage does not appear to assist in promoting diversity within the Australian Public Service (APS) in hiring. Overall, APS officers discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates. The practical impact is that, if implemented, de-identification may frustrate diversity efforts.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      As a single data point, this is interesting: "GitHub's ElectronConf postponed because all the talks (selected through an unbiased, blind review process) were to be given by men."[0] What's interesting, I suppose, is not that the selected speakers were all men (which could have happened by random chance), but the reaction by the conference organisers to that fact. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_electronconf_postponed_because_all_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    > Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. I have to laugh my ass off. In reality, boys get 800 on the math SAT at over twice the rate that girls do. That article addressing this by stating "the SAT is hardly a random sample of all students" is complete nonsense. The idea that smart males and females are produced at the same rate is ludicrous on its face, because female brains are made with the information from two X chromosomes and males with just the one.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Can you explain the last paragraph a bit?
  - nshepperd 6y ago
    Parent said "influence desired career paths", which is not the same as differences in performance. People choose a career path for many reasons besides ability, such as individual personality, ability in alternative jobs (note the quote in your first link which points out that "girls outperform their male counterparts on achievement tests in stereotypically feminine subject areas"), or even their experience being bullied in high school with regard to the job. Furthermore, if you want to come to valid statistical conclusions about whether a discrepancy is due to a particular cause (and can't just do a RCT), it's not enough to just ignore plausible confounders until they are "provable". You need to systematically control for all possible confounders.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths. IMHO what is actually being claimed, and which there is academic consensus based on facts around, is that sexism has been such a pervasive cultural force, to such a degree that it's difficult to parse nature versus nurture. Plus science is still working on nature vs nature - it's complex. So. Simpler to start with the known, empirically verified problem in front of our eyes.
zo1 6y ago
You're not the only one that sees the downright blatant sexism and hatefulness of some of these policies. There are probably a lot of people at your workplace that feel the same way that you do, but repress themselves for fear of being put on a train and shipped off to a "re-education camp".
lsiebert 6y ago
It's better to see this as a conscious attempt to correct sexism than as sexism itself. It's a blunt instrument, to address a blunt injustice that occurs at all levels of society. Just because you aren't all men, doesn't mean you haven't had advantages that women are denied. It's just that these advantages are normalized in the system, so they aren't as apparent as the corrective measures. It's really easy to miss them, just like, for example if you play a shooter on an easy mode first, you don't necessarily know how it would be harder. That said, you want to talk to your director or learn about your career? Email them and ask them about it.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  The problem I have with this, is the examples I gave of sexism are institutional, explicit, codified programs. "We will reward hiring and promoting women." "Women get an advantage in the hiring and interview process." "This career development process is explicitly for women." I could go on. Girls aren't obviously disadvantaged in school. Girls outperform boys in every subject, science and math included, and have for decades[1]. Women are admitted more to colleges and graduate more[2]. Then there are structural programs at major companies to advantage women in hiring and career growth, as I mentioned. It is true that women face the subtle kinds of discrimination referenced elsewhere. I'm not denying that. I'm saying that instituting programs which relatively disadvantage my career and opportunities due to my gender strikes me as unfair. I don't get a benefit because the executive leadership team is mostly men. They don't share the money and power with me because we are all men - so why am I disadvantaged because other men have achieved success? 1 - https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades 2 - https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-new-college-minority/536103/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-me...
  - lsiebert 6y ago
    Ah that's because the bias against women isn't codified or a program, it's systemic, and therefore can be found mainly from it's effects. They aren't obvious because bias isn't necessarily obvious. For example, here's a study where candidates with the same cv differ only by name. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/07/new-study-finds-discrimination-against-women-and-racial-minorities-hiring-sciences https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/07/new-study-fin... I gotta run, so I don't have time to cite it, but women, controlling for job qualifications and profession, earn 98% for every dollar a man earns. That may not seem like much, but the effect is enhanced by hiring and promotion differences and other effects of bias. As to your question of not getting the benefit, how do you know that gender bias didn't help you get hired or affect your pay? Are you so sure that if you were a woman, you would have been hired, paid, and promoted just like you were now? Regardless, policies are based on affecting the most good for the most people, not on helping you.
john_moscow 6y ago
It all suddenly makes more sense if you allow a forbidden assumption that women are statistically less likely to flip out and start a competing company, instead of just being a cog in the machine. Or to feel superior to their boss, and do some political maneuvering to take over his position. It also artificially limits the demand for men (lowering the salary costs) and normalizes dual-income families where 2 people have to work full-time to afford the same quality of life that the previous generation could get from a single salary.
- tomp 6y ago
  Ding ding ding, we have a winner! The culture war is just a distraction, a divide-and-conquer strategy by the wealthy elites (who are isolated enough in their personal lives to be able to avoid all this noise) playing the masses to hate each other instead of hating and attacking the elites. The best strategy is not to play, blend in and try to reach elite level yourself.
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    Sadly, not going to work. Assume work hard and reach some level of prosperity, enough to have a big house, and afford kids. You pass your values and knowledge to them, try to raise them according your understanding of what's best. The very next moment the social justice kicks in. Your kids are labelled privileged. They will be demoralized at school and told to hate themselves. They will be penalized when trying to apply to top academic institutions, denied promotions at work, and constantly guilt-tripped. Instead these positions will be split between those who get them via connections, and the "disadvantaged" people who will pose a much lower political threat to the "connected" group. So unless you are a part of the hereditary elites, whatever wealth you have created, gets erased in the next generation.
lc9er 6y ago
I feel like this is genuine take. I don’t know your age or anything other that what you wrote, so I’ll relate my experience. I saw many of these same initiatives beginning as I was moving through high school and college. Being young and generally feeling like I treated people fairly, I assumed that most of the world treated others the same. Sexism seemed antiquated. Fast forward a couple of decades and the women in my life still get second-guessed, mansplained, faced lowered expectations, and/or past over for promotions. Some of it is blatant sexism. Some of it is sexism-light, where not being part of the boys’ club leaves them excluded from the power-clique. They still have a markedly different professional experience than I do, because they are women. Is there a better way to handle this than what you described? Maybe. But I don’t think the need for such support mechanisms has expired yet.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  >the women in my life still get second-guessed, mansplained, faced lowered expectations, and/or past over for promotions. My wife works for a non-profit. Her supervisor (a woman) was up for a promotion. She has worked at the place for 5 years. A guy who was newly hired 2 years back was also up for the promotion but he had more experience for the role (he had worked at a bigger firm and had done work at higher levels before, it's a legal nonprofit). These were the only two up for the role. It's between work experience and time with the organization. Whichever you value more will probably determine who you choose. The big boss (a woman) ended up choosing the man over the woman for the job. The woman was qualified. No doubt. For my wife and her supervisor, this was another example of sexism, women getting passed over for promotions again. But for the big boss (a woman) or for someone else on the outside, it's not so clear. Her leg up was her experience in the org. His leg up was his experience from other orgs. When looking at a situation like this, how can you prove this is sexism? For someone it will be proof positive of sexism. For another it won't be. Explicit, institutional sexism towards males is easy to spot out. Towards women, it takes this form, where you can't honestly say you 100% know it's sexism. So what do you do then?
  - manquer 6y ago
    Over smaller sample size of 1 jumping to conclusions is not in good faith. if the superboss has done this consistently in the past, then your wife's supervisor has grounds[1]. However with a sample size of 1 , it could be hundred factors and it is unfair to accuse anyone . [1] Even when is there larger sample it is nuanced and tricky to really say, unless the superboss explicitly favours women there are inherent biases in the system against them, for example amount of mandatory maternity leave u.s. offers is pitiful, there are lesser women in STEM etc, the super boss selection criteria may be biased because of underlying biases not necessarily her own. Doesn't mean she should get a free pass, It should be investigated/reviewed before jumping to the conclusion of labelling someone sexist.
newusrnov23 6y ago
Well said. I think these D&I (wait, DEI now) practices are highly questionable and I'm really wondering when companies will get sued for discrimination.
manquer 6y ago
This is classical dilema between affirmative action and meritocracy. The argument for affirmative action goes that any special treatment only counters the biases and limitations you don't face and they do. The argument against affirmative action is that it is very hard to remove preferential treatment once it is in place even if it no longer required. The other argument is that such affirmative action does not efficiently target the truly deserving or the underlying cause. Dependent probability is never factored in, while it is true the number of women who get into STEM or programing is low, the biases in companies is considerably less once they are in. Over extending benefits in the workplace is not perhapa as important as getting education fixed in schools and colleges. There are no easy answers
- adamsea 6y ago
  > The argument against affirmative action is that it is very hard to remove preferential treatment once it is in place even if it no longer required. Once you educate yourself with fact-based historical information to understand how unfair the system has been, this actually is an argument in favor of affirmative action. Point being that until very recently the biases has been extreme, so that despite positive changes in both culture and law, equality will not happen over night (as you said, things persist), and thus affirmative action is important even after the most pernicious source of discrimination has been removed. Affirmative action is complex, no question, but your particular point is more of an argument for it than one against it.
  - manquer 6y ago
    I have no opinion what is the right approach, I merely presented both sides of the argument. To elaborate on the why not: The problem is rarely the intent of affirmative action .it is in the execution, same problems with big / small government , and the idea behind UBI or give cash instead of subsidy is sometimes bettee. I grew up in a country where affirmative action is codified in the law and about 50 % of job openings, promotions university seats are reserved and has been for the last 70 years. Was it and still is there need for it ? Yes absolutely, however the efficiency of allocation is a challenge , some groups who needed it 70 years back don't really need it anymore , however it is political suicide to even propose a reduction or a reallocation to reflect today's problems. It doesn't mean we should not do anything, however to ignore the misalignment of incentives inefficiency of allocation and stickyness of any action is not good either.
adamsea 6y ago
> I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. These two sentences contradict each other. You also say "I am not all men", but, sadly, the issue with systemic biases (racism, sexism, etc), is that it's not about individuals. You seem smart enough to be able to theorize about ways in which, as a man, you may have unknowningly benefited from systemic biases over the course of your education / career. For one thing you don't have to worry about being sexually harassed or raped by a friend/coworker - the numbers are pretty bad. We're supposed to be rational, work with numbers, etc - so even if we can't prove the effect of a systemic bias on an individual, our knowledge of the data and basic statistics should lead us to be able to make reasonable inferences about general cases, etc. I guess what I'm saying is, be the bigger man, in both ways in which that phrase can be read. It's not all about you.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  You seem to be arguing for laws that treat people differently based on their immutable characteristics - i.e. gender. I think that's wrong and people should be treated equally. It's true that most of upper management is male - but that fact only incurs a cost on me, not a benefit. The cost is: The upper management is incentivized to promote women (i.e. not me) to balance out their existing maleness. I could be the "bigger man" by ignoring structural disadvantages against me and people like me, and in real life, of course I do ignore these disadvantages. The reason I ignore them is not because I think it makes me a bigger man, but because if I spoke out against them I would be fired and ostracized. People would hate me for raising or sharing these opinions. For your point about sexual harassment and rape - this is not something specific to the tech industry and not something that is fixed by deciding to prefer women over men in hiring decisions. Is the idea that, because women are more likely to be sexually harassed or raped, outside of prison, they should get the compensatory prize of these career benefits I've described? That just seems like a non-sequitur to me.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    > You seem to be arguing for laws that treat people differently based on their immutable characteristics - i.e. gender. I think that's wrong and people should be treated equally. That's not what I am arguing. What I am saying is, if people were currently being treated equally then we would not have to have this conversation. The truth is that they are not. I mean come on, have you ever heard of the Bedchel test? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test "It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added." You have to exercise a lot of mental energy to not see all the ways in which there is systemic sexism in our society and workplace. You also have to decide that all these women must be, making this shit up? You also have to be pretty ignorant, either deliberately or through circumstance having placed you in an unhealthy media environment. These days there are a lot of fact-based, data-supported history books, studies, etc, talking about systemic sexism both past and present. To sum up, however good your tech knowledge may be, your knowledge - current, best-practices knowledge, so to speak, of history is weak. Or, you don't want to acknowledge the truth. Those are facts.

tuesdayrain 6y ago

That is absolutely sexism. It deeply bothers me that some people think tech must be exactly 50% male/female, and anything else is inherent sexism. It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths.

lsiebert 6y ago
If there are provable differences that effect performance, by all means cite them. But it's more likely that unseen bias affects hiring and promotions. Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/myth-busted-girls-cant-do-math... Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-the-best-hiring.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/is-blind-hiring-...
- duckmysick 6y ago
  > Blind hiring increases diversity in hiring This one says it doesn't: https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/domestic-policy/beta-report-going-blind-see-more-clearly https://www.pmc.gov.au/news-centre/domestic-policy/beta-repo... > What we found is that de-identifying applications at the shortlisting stage does not appear to assist in promoting diversity within the Australian Public Service (APS) in hiring. Overall, APS officers discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates. The practical impact is that, if implemented, de-identification may frustrate diversity efforts.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    As a single data point, this is interesting: "GitHub's ElectronConf postponed because all the talks (selected through an unbiased, blind review process) were to be given by men."[0] What's interesting, I suppose, is not that the selected speakers were all men (which could have happened by random chance), but the reaction by the conference organisers to that fact. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_electronconf_postponed_because_all_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6f8u2s/githubs_...
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  > Girls and boys mathematical abilities are equivalent. I have to laugh my ass off. In reality, boys get 800 on the math SAT at over twice the rate that girls do. That article addressing this by stating "the SAT is hardly a random sample of all students" is complete nonsense. The idea that smart males and females are produced at the same rate is ludicrous on its face, because female brains are made with the information from two X chromosomes and males with just the one.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    Can you explain the last paragraph a bit?
- nshepperd 6y ago
  Parent said "influence desired career paths", which is not the same as differences in performance. People choose a career path for many reasons besides ability, such as individual personality, ability in alternative jobs (note the quote in your first link which points out that "girls outperform their male counterparts on achievement tests in stereotypically feminine subject areas"), or even their experience being bullied in high school with regard to the job. Furthermore, if you want to come to valid statistical conclusions about whether a discrepancy is due to a particular cause (and can't just do a RCT), it's not enough to just ignore plausible confounders until they are "provable". You need to systematically control for all possible confounders.
adamsea 6y ago
> It's anti-scientific to deny the possibility that biological gender can influence desired career paths. IMHO what is actually being claimed, and which there is academic consensus based on facts around, is that sexism has been such a pervasive cultural force, to such a degree that it's difficult to parse nature versus nurture. Plus science is still working on nature vs nature - it's complex. So. Simpler to start with the known, empirically verified problem in front of our eyes.

zo1 6y ago

You're not the only one that sees the downright blatant sexism and hatefulness of some of these policies. There are probably a lot of people at your workplace that feel the same way that you do, but repress themselves for fear of being put on a train and shipped off to a "re-education camp".

lsiebert 6y ago

It's better to see this as a conscious attempt to correct sexism than as sexism itself. It's a blunt instrument, to address a blunt injustice that occurs at all levels of society. Just because you aren't all men, doesn't mean you haven't had advantages that women are denied. It's just that these advantages are normalized in the system, so they aren't as apparent as the corrective measures. It's really easy to miss them, just like, for example if you play a shooter on an easy mode first, you don't necessarily know how it would be harder. That said, you want to talk to your director or learn about your career? Email them and ask them about it.

ALittleLight 6y ago
The problem I have with this, is the examples I gave of sexism are institutional, explicit, codified programs. "We will reward hiring and promoting women." "Women get an advantage in the hiring and interview process." "This career development process is explicitly for women." I could go on. Girls aren't obviously disadvantaged in school. Girls outperform boys in every subject, science and math included, and have for decades[1]. Women are admitted more to colleges and graduate more[2]. Then there are structural programs at major companies to advantage women in hiring and career growth, as I mentioned. It is true that women face the subtle kinds of discrimination referenced elsewhere. I'm not denying that. I'm saying that instituting programs which relatively disadvantage my career and opportunities due to my gender strikes me as unfair. I don't get a benefit because the executive leadership team is mostly men. They don't share the money and power with me because we are all men - so why am I disadvantaged because other men have achieved success? 1 - https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/04/girls-grades 2 - https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-new-college-minority/536103/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-me...
- lsiebert 6y ago
  Ah that's because the bias against women isn't codified or a program, it's systemic, and therefore can be found mainly from it's effects. They aren't obvious because bias isn't necessarily obvious. For example, here's a study where candidates with the same cv differ only by name. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/07/new-study-finds-discrimination-against-women-and-racial-minorities-hiring-sciences https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/07/new-study-fin... I gotta run, so I don't have time to cite it, but women, controlling for job qualifications and profession, earn 98% for every dollar a man earns. That may not seem like much, but the effect is enhanced by hiring and promotion differences and other effects of bias. As to your question of not getting the benefit, how do you know that gender bias didn't help you get hired or affect your pay? Are you so sure that if you were a woman, you would have been hired, paid, and promoted just like you were now? Regardless, policies are based on affecting the most good for the most people, not on helping you.

john_moscow 6y ago

It all suddenly makes more sense if you allow a forbidden assumption that women are statistically less likely to flip out and start a competing company, instead of just being a cog in the machine. Or to feel superior to their boss, and do some political maneuvering to take over his position. It also artificially limits the demand for men (lowering the salary costs) and normalizes dual-income families where 2 people have to work full-time to afford the same quality of life that the previous generation could get from a single salary.

tomp 6y ago
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! The culture war is just a distraction, a divide-and-conquer strategy by the wealthy elites (who are isolated enough in their personal lives to be able to avoid all this noise) playing the masses to hate each other instead of hating and attacking the elites. The best strategy is not to play, blend in and try to reach elite level yourself.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  Sadly, not going to work. Assume work hard and reach some level of prosperity, enough to have a big house, and afford kids. You pass your values and knowledge to them, try to raise them according your understanding of what's best. The very next moment the social justice kicks in. Your kids are labelled privileged. They will be demoralized at school and told to hate themselves. They will be penalized when trying to apply to top academic institutions, denied promotions at work, and constantly guilt-tripped. Instead these positions will be split between those who get them via connections, and the "disadvantaged" people who will pose a much lower political threat to the "connected" group. So unless you are a part of the hereditary elites, whatever wealth you have created, gets erased in the next generation.

lc9er 6y ago

I feel like this is genuine take. I don’t know your age or anything other that what you wrote, so I’ll relate my experience. I saw many of these same initiatives beginning as I was moving through high school and college. Being young and generally feeling like I treated people fairly, I assumed that most of the world treated others the same. Sexism seemed antiquated. Fast forward a couple of decades and the women in my life still get second-guessed, mansplained, faced lowered expectations, and/or past over for promotions. Some of it is blatant sexism. Some of it is sexism-light, where not being part of the boys’ club leaves them excluded from the power-clique. They still have a markedly different professional experience than I do, because they are women. Is there a better way to handle this than what you described? Maybe. But I don’t think the need for such support mechanisms has expired yet.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
>the women in my life still get second-guessed, mansplained, faced lowered expectations, and/or past over for promotions. My wife works for a non-profit. Her supervisor (a woman) was up for a promotion. She has worked at the place for 5 years. A guy who was newly hired 2 years back was also up for the promotion but he had more experience for the role (he had worked at a bigger firm and had done work at higher levels before, it's a legal nonprofit). These were the only two up for the role. It's between work experience and time with the organization. Whichever you value more will probably determine who you choose. The big boss (a woman) ended up choosing the man over the woman for the job. The woman was qualified. No doubt. For my wife and her supervisor, this was another example of sexism, women getting passed over for promotions again. But for the big boss (a woman) or for someone else on the outside, it's not so clear. Her leg up was her experience in the org. His leg up was his experience from other orgs. When looking at a situation like this, how can you prove this is sexism? For someone it will be proof positive of sexism. For another it won't be. Explicit, institutional sexism towards males is easy to spot out. Towards women, it takes this form, where you can't honestly say you 100% know it's sexism. So what do you do then?
- manquer 6y ago
  Over smaller sample size of 1 jumping to conclusions is not in good faith. if the superboss has done this consistently in the past, then your wife's supervisor has grounds[1]. However with a sample size of 1 , it could be hundred factors and it is unfair to accuse anyone . [1] Even when is there larger sample it is nuanced and tricky to really say, unless the superboss explicitly favours women there are inherent biases in the system against them, for example amount of mandatory maternity leave u.s. offers is pitiful, there are lesser women in STEM etc, the super boss selection criteria may be biased because of underlying biases not necessarily her own. Doesn't mean she should get a free pass, It should be investigated/reviewed before jumping to the conclusion of labelling someone sexist.

newusrnov23 6y ago

Well said. I think these D&I (wait, DEI now) practices are highly questionable and I'm really wondering when companies will get sued for discrimination.

manquer 6y ago

This is classical dilema between affirmative action and meritocracy. The argument for affirmative action goes that any special treatment only counters the biases and limitations you don't face and they do. The argument against affirmative action is that it is very hard to remove preferential treatment once it is in place even if it no longer required. The other argument is that such affirmative action does not efficiently target the truly deserving or the underlying cause. Dependent probability is never factored in, while it is true the number of women who get into STEM or programing is low, the biases in companies is considerably less once they are in. Over extending benefits in the workplace is not perhapa as important as getting education fixed in schools and colleges. There are no easy answers

adamsea 6y ago
> The argument against affirmative action is that it is very hard to remove preferential treatment once it is in place even if it no longer required. Once you educate yourself with fact-based historical information to understand how unfair the system has been, this actually is an argument in favor of affirmative action. Point being that until very recently the biases has been extreme, so that despite positive changes in both culture and law, equality will not happen over night (as you said, things persist), and thus affirmative action is important even after the most pernicious source of discrimination has been removed. Affirmative action is complex, no question, but your particular point is more of an argument for it than one against it.
- manquer 6y ago
  I have no opinion what is the right approach, I merely presented both sides of the argument. To elaborate on the why not: The problem is rarely the intent of affirmative action .it is in the execution, same problems with big / small government , and the idea behind UBI or give cash instead of subsidy is sometimes bettee. I grew up in a country where affirmative action is codified in the law and about 50 % of job openings, promotions university seats are reserved and has been for the last 70 years. Was it and still is there need for it ? Yes absolutely, however the efficiency of allocation is a challenge , some groups who needed it 70 years back don't really need it anymore , however it is political suicide to even propose a reduction or a reallocation to reflect today's problems. It doesn't mean we should not do anything, however to ignore the misalignment of incentives inefficiency of allocation and stickyness of any action is not good either.

adamsea 6y ago

> I get that these things are all because women are underrepresented in tech and surely there are challenges for women and sexism against women. However, the examples above still feel like sexism to me. These two sentences contradict each other. You also say "I am not all men", but, sadly, the issue with systemic biases (racism, sexism, etc), is that it's not about individuals. You seem smart enough to be able to theorize about ways in which, as a man, you may have unknowningly benefited from systemic biases over the course of your education / career. For one thing you don't have to worry about being sexually harassed or raped by a friend/coworker - the numbers are pretty bad. We're supposed to be rational, work with numbers, etc - so even if we can't prove the effect of a systemic bias on an individual, our knowledge of the data and basic statistics should lead us to be able to make reasonable inferences about general cases, etc. I guess what I'm saying is, be the bigger man, in both ways in which that phrase can be read. It's not all about you.

ALittleLight 6y ago
You seem to be arguing for laws that treat people differently based on their immutable characteristics - i.e. gender. I think that's wrong and people should be treated equally. It's true that most of upper management is male - but that fact only incurs a cost on me, not a benefit. The cost is: The upper management is incentivized to promote women (i.e. not me) to balance out their existing maleness. I could be the "bigger man" by ignoring structural disadvantages against me and people like me, and in real life, of course I do ignore these disadvantages. The reason I ignore them is not because I think it makes me a bigger man, but because if I spoke out against them I would be fired and ostracized. People would hate me for raising or sharing these opinions. For your point about sexual harassment and rape - this is not something specific to the tech industry and not something that is fixed by deciding to prefer women over men in hiring decisions. Is the idea that, because women are more likely to be sexually harassed or raped, outside of prison, they should get the compensatory prize of these career benefits I've described? That just seems like a non-sequitur to me.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > You seem to be arguing for laws that treat people differently based on their immutable characteristics - i.e. gender. I think that's wrong and people should be treated equally. That's not what I am arguing. What I am saying is, if people were currently being treated equally then we would not have to have this conversation. The truth is that they are not. I mean come on, have you ever heard of the Bedchel test? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test "It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added." You have to exercise a lot of mental energy to not see all the ways in which there is systemic sexism in our society and workplace. You also have to decide that all these women must be, making this shit up? You also have to be pretty ignorant, either deliberately or through circumstance having placed you in an unhealthy media environment. These days there are a lot of fact-based, data-supported history books, studies, etc, talking about systemic sexism both past and present. To sum up, however good your tech knowledge may be, your knowledge - current, best-practices knowledge, so to speak, of history is weak. Or, you don't want to acknowledge the truth. Those are facts.