4 ms·

Gender is social construct. Sex is a biological one. Sex is a protected class. Gender is not. Why should we have gender-free job ads any more than we should ha

by dmm 15y ago

Gender is social construct. Sex is a biological one. Sex is a protected class. Gender is not. Why should we have gender-free job ads any more than we should have ads free of any other quality?

rayiner 15y ago
Efficiency. You're going to have to go deeper into the bell curve of the talent pool to fill the same number of spots if you're turning off half your potential employees.
- dmm 15y ago
  That makes sense. I just didn't understand what the article was getting at.
sp332 15y ago
researchers believe it’s likely that companies unintentionally place gendered job advertisements. “Many companies want to diversify,” Gaucher says. “Companies that use highly masculine wording may, in reality, be just as welcoming to their female employees as they are to their male employees.” This isn't about protecting gender, it's about unintentionally stomping on it. If you're accidentally alienating half of the population, you're going to miss out on a lot of good attributes of that gender. Some examples from the article: "competitive" and "dominant" (male) versus "compassionate" and "nurturing" (female). And how likely would it be for a male-gendered person to make the videos in this article: http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own-computer-ask-ars-diy-series-part-i.ars http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own...
- jerf 15y ago
  Who says it's an accident? Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and compassionate, caring enterprise sales staff? "Job ads should be gender neutral" is an awfully large thing to take as an unexamined axiom. Should they really? Or should they reflect the desired position? And if the latter, if someone writes a bad job position that scares off some good applicants, does it really matter on what dimension they are scaring off good applicants? Regardless of how they're scaring them off, they're hurting themselves quite directly far more than the diffuse effect on the applicant pool. It just seems like the more you drill down into this and actually think, the less interesting this becomes.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Regardless of how they're scaring them off, they're hurting themselves quite directly far more than the diffuse effect on the applicant pool. Definitely true. Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and compassionate, caring enterprise sales staff? The range of problems you can solve increases exponentially with the different types of people you have on the team. The types you mention would be a good addition to a team with complementary attributes.

by dmm 15y ago

Gender is social construct. Sex is a biological one. Sex is a protected class. Gender is not. Why should we have gender-free job ads any more than we should have ads free of any other quality?

rayiner 15y ago

Efficiency. You're going to have to go deeper into the bell curve of the talent pool to fill the same number of spots if you're turning off half your potential employees.

dmm 15y ago
That makes sense. I just didn't understand what the article was getting at.

sp332 15y ago

researchers believe it’s likely that companies unintentionally place gendered job advertisements. “Many companies want to diversify,” Gaucher says. “Companies that use highly masculine wording may, in reality, be just as welcoming to their female employees as they are to their male employees.” This isn't about protecting gender, it's about unintentionally stomping on it. If you're accidentally alienating half of the population, you're going to miss out on a lot of good attributes of that gender. Some examples from the article: "competitive" and "dominant" (male) versus "compassionate" and "nurturing" (female). And how likely would it be for a male-gendered person to make the videos in this article: http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own-computer-ask-ars-diy-series-part-i.ars http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own...

jerf 15y ago
Who says it's an accident? Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and compassionate, caring enterprise sales staff? "Job ads should be gender neutral" is an awfully large thing to take as an unexamined axiom. Should they really? Or should they reflect the desired position? And if the latter, if someone writes a bad job position that scares off some good applicants, does it really matter on what dimension they are scaring off good applicants? Regardless of how they're scaring them off, they're hurting themselves quite directly far more than the diffuse effect on the applicant pool. It just seems like the more you drill down into this and actually think, the less interesting this becomes.
- sp332 15y ago
  Regardless of how they're scaring them off, they're hurting themselves quite directly far more than the diffuse effect on the applicant pool. Definitely true. Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and compassionate, caring enterprise sales staff? The range of problems you can solve increases exponentially with the different types of people you have on the team. The types you mention would be a good addition to a team with complementary attributes.