11 ms·

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 preference for women on STEM tenure track (2015)

94 points by Melchizedek 5y ago

gsharm 5y ago
Academia is dead. What Austen is doing with lambdaschool.com (and similar) will be the way forward.
- 4ad 5y ago
  I'm pretty critical of academia, but even without knowing what lambdaschool.com is I am pretty certain it can't, or should not compete with academia. Vocational training and academic training are very different things. (And both are useful in their own right.) Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools... I think I've seen this sort of sentiment repeated countless times for a number of years, but I strongly suspect it's quite ahistorical and incorrect. I'm sure there is some diversity in how public university systems developed in various places, but the state university (you know, not Harvard or something) I went to evolved from a teachers college. It was educating people for careers before it tried to follow a curriculum like liberal arts colleges. Zooming out, wasn't there a period of time when there was a whole movement to repurpose higher education from educating a small elite in Latin, Greek, etc. to essentially vocational education? Didn't this go hand in hand with the upheaval of the industrial revolution, and the idea that the masses should be educated? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university When people sneer at universities being places to educate people in useful skills, it bewilders me because it seems like they are just wiping away the last couple centuries in favor of a vague desire to return to an era that simply didn't educate the average person. I just have had this sense of weirdness for years that never goes away, whenever people matter-of-factly complain about universities being focused on practical subjects as though it were a recent degeneration of higher education. It was always (for the hoi polloi) this way! It was meant to be this way, going back 160 years!
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Call me when every other highly tech field has “bootcamps” pumping out grads that employers in their respective fields will actually look at and hire.
- moab 5y ago
  Although you might have a point with regards to vocational training, there is basically no research coming out of places like lambda school and the recurse center (please correct me if I am wrong). Things will change only when researchers can find stable (and reliable) sources of funding outside the traditional sphere of institutions like universities.
rohan_ 5y ago
(2015)
magneticnorth 5y ago
Is the gender gap believed to be due to sexist hiring? I had thought getting acceptance letters and job offers was the relatively easy (and maybe even privileged) part, but then women have to deal with harassment, coworkers who would rather be romantic interests than collaborators, or just having to prove themselves more frequently and against a higher bar than the comparable men, so they're more likely to self-select out more quickly than men do.
- bioinformatics 5y ago
  Lol
- artichokes 5y ago
  Is it possible that there are things people might rather do than spend 8 hours a day coding enterprise web-apps, for 30 years? I wish I had the option to self-select out. I would much rather spend time with our toddler. If my wife were to volunteer to take up a programming job, because she wanted to relieve the need for time and resources from me so I could do what I want- is that relationship best described as oppression?
prestigious 5y ago
No kidding huh? Who could have predicted this except for anyone who worked in tech for the past decade or two. It’s obvious women have a huge advantage.
- aaplok 5y ago
  No, it's not. Enough people hold the opposite view to at least agree that it is not obvious. It is fine to have an opinion on the matter, but it is unwise to believe that opinion to be so obvious that arguing for it is unnecessary.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Arguing for it is extremely necessary, but that doesn't mean it isn't obvious. We have explicit directions to hire and promote more women and executive compensation tied to it. It would be surprising if women weren't favored in the hiring process.
- mmiliauskas 5y ago
  Anecdotal, but I noticed this too in my last two employments. We would give coding tests and the scoring threshold for women would be greatly reduced, because we wanted to have more women around, instead of just guys.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    HR would push unqualified female candidates into our hiring pool bypassing our screening processes (despite the fact that we already had vetted qualified female candidates in our pool)...we're talking people three levels too junior, or in one case someone who didn't speak English at all. Then there would be some really nasty pressure from HR to hire those candidates. Then late last year our engineering leadership said that they were creating a director level position exclusively for a female person of color that would be an outside hire, which I'm pretty certain is illegal. Though they still haven't done that yet.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers .” That is a very interesting bias. I wonder what the thought patterns around this are.
- jollybean 5y ago
  "I wonder what the thought patterns around this are. " I would imagine a form of empathy especially for single mothers and all sorts of possible presumptions about issues in relationships etc. but that's total speculation on my part.
- grasshopperpurp 5y ago
  In my early 20s, and during the recession, I worked at a gas station. I also bought a house, so even though I didn't like the job or plan to be there long, I was trying to get promoted (entry-level managers made almost twice as much as entry-level associates, factoring in OT and bonuses). I was seen as a great worker, because I worked when I was supposed to, but I had a terrible time getting promoted. No one at my particular station was getting promoted, so I assumed it was just a long process. The gas station was also hiring a lot of managers from outside the company - people who had more lucrative and prestigious jobs, which were the casualties of the recession. One day, though, a new, young, single-mother started with the same job (associate) I had, and I watched her get promoted within a month or two. She was a fine worker, nothing wrong with her, but she was not a better worker than I was. I do think that being a single mom expedited her promotion. You couldn't talk to her for more than a minute without learning her backstory and hearing about how much she loves her son. I think management saw her as an easy person to root for, and I can't really fault them for that. But, she also played the game much better than I did. When she worked, you knew she was working. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, she'd make sure everyone knew how much she was busting her ass. At the time, being young and naive, I thought it was extremely distasteful and painfully corny. I didn't understand the concept that management really only pays attention when you give them reason to. Either you're fucking up or fucking off, and they need to correct you; or you're shining your own spotlight on what you've done and how impressive it is. Only experienced and thoughtful managers will properly value good workers who don't make a show of it. She was also more gregarious than I was, and it'd be disingenuous to share this anecdote without noting that. I think it's part of my bigger point, though. I wanted to make more money so that I could live more comfortably, but she needed to, and the ways we played the game reflected that.
sm0ss117 5y ago
Time to do that most desperate of things, actually read past the abstract. First, this study was only in academia, and not industry so the results aren't necessarily generalizable. They probably do have some correlation, but they're very different environments. Second, the very first paragraph after the abstract goes into why actually getting hired is just a tiny part of why women don't go in to stem, "...including inadequate mentoring and networking (1); a chilly social climate (2); downgrading of work products such as manuscripts (3), grant proposals (4), and lectures (5); and gender bias in interviewing and hiring (6–9)." Third, this was rating an applicant for a third party, not actually hiring an applicant for them self, ppl act different when they have no skin in the game. While experiment 5 did try to account for this by removing the direct competition aspect so they only rated a single candidate rather than selecting a better choice from 2 options, however again there's no consequence for the choice except having your response presented in a paper. What this study does show is that academics think that other academics view hiring equally women over men as socially desirable. This is not the same as actually doing it when given the opportunity, for an example of this see https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711747?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711747?seq=1 and the general trend of Americans saying they go to church even when they don't.
- anthony_d 5y ago
  The paper is pretty clear in its findings. Why do you feel compelled to dismiss it based on what it doesn’t say? It adds to our knowledge of a real issue and you seem to be more concerned with not having to adjust your views at all.
  - HillRat 5y ago
    As a potted experiment, it really doesn’t generalize well. Weighting identical candidates except for race/gender/etc. may help uncover obvious forms of discrimination, but doesn’t address the path dependency aspects. For example, in the life sciences, women get less funding and fewer staff when founding research groups, while “elite” male researchers train 10-40% fewer women than other labs; as a result, women tend to have “worse” CVs later in their career due to earlier discrimination.
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
0xy 5y ago
It's worth noting this has been backed up by other research. If resumes are anonymised and hiring is blind, then women and minorities actually get hired far less of the time according to multiple studies. [1] This means they are receiving positive discrimination. It's also not surprising, considering the gender balance of HR departments [2], and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs (female teachers in the UK mark boys worse for identical work, for example [3]). [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri... [2] https://www.visier.com/clarity/gender-divide-part-1/ https://www.visier.com/clarity/gender-divide-part-1/ [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672
- creato 5y ago
  > It's also not surprising, considering the gender balance of HR departments [2], and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs (female teachers in the UK mark boys worse for identical work, for example [3]). I agree it's not surprising, but you're making it sound a lot more dramatic than it is. Employers are getting raked over the coals by activists and the press for not being "diverse enough". Of course when all else is equal (and maybe not so equal), they'll prefer to hire women/minorities. They'll be willing to go higher in bidding wars with other employers over female/minority applicants. It's not a conspiracy by female HR departments. I've never worked anywhere that HR decided who to hire anyways.
  - bopbeepboop 5y ago
    HR is the one telling the company to engage in systemic discrimination because a small minority of highly vocal bigots on Twitter confirm their biases. HR is the real bigot here, not a small contingent of vocal bigot “activists”.
- mpweiher 5y ago
  > and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs Not just teachers: Gender Differences in Automatic In-Group Bias: Why Do Women Like Women More Than Men Like Men? https://rutgerssocialcognitionlab.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/7/13979590/rudmangoodwin2004jpsp.pdf https://rutgerssocialcognitionlab.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/7...
tootahe45 5y ago
Seeing under-qualified women who were winging it the whole way through their degree get top jobs straight out of uni, then getting rejected from the same firms myself, had me very jaded on this subject. Also missed an internship i really wanted, instead of automating key processes for the company they ended up doing literally nothing the whole time they were there (they barely figured out the basics of Powershell by the end of the internship (the company wanted it done in Powershell)). This led to depression and a year of me not even bothering to seek employment. Sorry if this comment is pointless, just needed to vent. My personal view is that it's not about being a woman but about being a well socialized 'cultural fit'. Almost all women i meet are well socialized, only a minority of men my age seem to fit into this category though.
- foobiter 5y ago
  are you trying to say that a bias towards hiring women in academia means more incompetent women are hired? that’s a rather unfair leap to take!
- throwamwayrnrkd 5y ago
  Don't apologize. It's healthy to vent in low-stakes settings, and to recognize that you're emotional at the time. I hope that you take another look at the job market. Sometimes you get knocked down through no fault of your own. The people who you are frustrated with have probably experienced that in different ways, but it's never pleasant. You and your talents are valuable, and luck is a big part of life. Keep at it - comparing other peoples' successes or failures to your own is a hedonic treadmill.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  How would you go about becoming a better cultural fit? I'm asking with an open mind here, and knowing two things: just telling yourself "you need to be more social" has, if anything, the opposite effect. And God, do I remember hating the feeling. And the second: I did it. Wasn't a huge difference, but went from mostly INTJ to mostly ENTJ over about 20 years. Unfortunately, 20 years is too long to be able to put my finger on something and say "this worked". If I were to give a hint, I'd say that context matters. Probably the most dramatic change was from being literally friendless for a few years to hosting parties, simply because I found a social group with common interests (and very common flaws). Also in the context category, I'd say competence helps a lot. You know that "Hermione" stereotype where you can only interact with people by helping them? It actually works. It takes many years, but eventually helping should lead to "working with" and eventually to "leading". Mind the "many years" part though.
bopbeepboop 5y ago
Yes, systemic misandry is real. Two generations of men have grown up with it.
ralusek 5y ago
Social justice initiatives don't advocate for blind hiring, they apply what they consider to be a "corrective" bias. Very few people who have been responsible for hiring engineers in SV would disagree with the premise of the study, although many would argue that there's nothing wrong with it.

94 points by Melchizedek 5y ago

gsharm 5y ago

Academia is dead. What Austen is doing with lambdaschool.com (and similar) will be the way forward.

4ad 5y ago
I'm pretty critical of academia, but even without knowing what lambdaschool.com is I am pretty certain it can't, or should not compete with academia. Vocational training and academic training are very different things. (And both are useful in their own right.) Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools... I think I've seen this sort of sentiment repeated countless times for a number of years, but I strongly suspect it's quite ahistorical and incorrect. I'm sure there is some diversity in how public university systems developed in various places, but the state university (you know, not Harvard or something) I went to evolved from a teachers college. It was educating people for careers before it tried to follow a curriculum like liberal arts colleges. Zooming out, wasn't there a period of time when there was a whole movement to repurpose higher education from educating a small elite in Latin, Greek, etc. to essentially vocational education? Didn't this go hand in hand with the upheaval of the industrial revolution, and the idea that the masses should be educated? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university When people sneer at universities being places to educate people in useful skills, it bewilders me because it seems like they are just wiping away the last couple centuries in favor of a vague desire to return to an era that simply didn't educate the average person. I just have had this sense of weirdness for years that never goes away, whenever people matter-of-factly complain about universities being focused on practical subjects as though it were a recent degeneration of higher education. It was always (for the hoi polloi) this way! It was meant to be this way, going back 160 years!
the_only_law 5y ago
Call me when every other highly tech field has “bootcamps” pumping out grads that employers in their respective fields will actually look at and hire.
moab 5y ago
Although you might have a point with regards to vocational training, there is basically no research coming out of places like lambda school and the recurse center (please correct me if I am wrong). Things will change only when researchers can find stable (and reliable) sources of funding outside the traditional sphere of institutions like universities.

rohan_ 5y ago

(2015)

magneticnorth 5y ago

Is the gender gap believed to be due to sexist hiring? I had thought getting acceptance letters and job offers was the relatively easy (and maybe even privileged) part, but then women have to deal with harassment, coworkers who would rather be romantic interests than collaborators, or just having to prove themselves more frequently and against a higher bar than the comparable men, so they're more likely to self-select out more quickly than men do.

bioinformatics 5y ago
Lol
artichokes 5y ago
Is it possible that there are things people might rather do than spend 8 hours a day coding enterprise web-apps, for 30 years? I wish I had the option to self-select out. I would much rather spend time with our toddler. If my wife were to volunteer to take up a programming job, because she wanted to relieve the need for time and resources from me so I could do what I want- is that relationship best described as oppression?

prestigious 5y ago

No kidding huh? Who could have predicted this except for anyone who worked in tech for the past decade or two. It’s obvious women have a huge advantage.

aaplok 5y ago
No, it's not. Enough people hold the opposite view to at least agree that it is not obvious. It is fine to have an opinion on the matter, but it is unwise to believe that opinion to be so obvious that arguing for it is unnecessary.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Arguing for it is extremely necessary, but that doesn't mean it isn't obvious. We have explicit directions to hire and promote more women and executive compensation tied to it. It would be surprising if women weren't favored in the hiring process.
mmiliauskas 5y ago
Anecdotal, but I noticed this too in my last two employments. We would give coding tests and the scoring threshold for women would be greatly reduced, because we wanted to have more women around, instead of just guys.
- busterarm 5y ago
  HR would push unqualified female candidates into our hiring pool bypassing our screening processes (despite the fact that we already had vetted qualified female candidates in our pool)...we're talking people three levels too junior, or in one case someone who didn't speak English at all. Then there would be some really nasty pressure from HR to hire those candidates. Then late last year our engineering leadership said that they were creating a director level position exclusively for a female person of color that would be an outside hire, which I'm pretty certain is illegal. Though they still haven't done that yet.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers .” That is a very interesting bias. I wonder what the thought patterns around this are.

jollybean 5y ago
"I wonder what the thought patterns around this are. " I would imagine a form of empathy especially for single mothers and all sorts of possible presumptions about issues in relationships etc. but that's total speculation on my part.
grasshopperpurp 5y ago
In my early 20s, and during the recession, I worked at a gas station. I also bought a house, so even though I didn't like the job or plan to be there long, I was trying to get promoted (entry-level managers made almost twice as much as entry-level associates, factoring in OT and bonuses). I was seen as a great worker, because I worked when I was supposed to, but I had a terrible time getting promoted. No one at my particular station was getting promoted, so I assumed it was just a long process. The gas station was also hiring a lot of managers from outside the company - people who had more lucrative and prestigious jobs, which were the casualties of the recession. One day, though, a new, young, single-mother started with the same job (associate) I had, and I watched her get promoted within a month or two. She was a fine worker, nothing wrong with her, but she was not a better worker than I was. I do think that being a single mom expedited her promotion. You couldn't talk to her for more than a minute without learning her backstory and hearing about how much she loves her son. I think management saw her as an easy person to root for, and I can't really fault them for that. But, she also played the game much better than I did. When she worked, you knew she was working. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, she'd make sure everyone knew how much she was busting her ass. At the time, being young and naive, I thought it was extremely distasteful and painfully corny. I didn't understand the concept that management really only pays attention when you give them reason to. Either you're fucking up or fucking off, and they need to correct you; or you're shining your own spotlight on what you've done and how impressive it is. Only experienced and thoughtful managers will properly value good workers who don't make a show of it. She was also more gregarious than I was, and it'd be disingenuous to share this anecdote without noting that. I think it's part of my bigger point, though. I wanted to make more money so that I could live more comfortably, but she needed to, and the ways we played the game reflected that.

sm0ss117 5y ago

Time to do that most desperate of things, actually read past the abstract. First, this study was only in academia, and not industry so the results aren't necessarily generalizable. They probably do have some correlation, but they're very different environments. Second, the very first paragraph after the abstract goes into why actually getting hired is just a tiny part of why women don't go in to stem, "...including inadequate mentoring and networking (1); a chilly social climate (2); downgrading of work products such as manuscripts (3), grant proposals (4), and lectures (5); and gender bias in interviewing and hiring (6–9)." Third, this was rating an applicant for a third party, not actually hiring an applicant for them self, ppl act different when they have no skin in the game. While experiment 5 did try to account for this by removing the direct competition aspect so they only rated a single candidate rather than selecting a better choice from 2 options, however again there's no consequence for the choice except having your response presented in a paper. What this study does show is that academics think that other academics view hiring equally women over men as socially desirable. This is not the same as actually doing it when given the opportunity, for an example of this see https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711747?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3711747?seq=1 and the general trend of Americans saying they go to church even when they don't.

anthony_d 5y ago
The paper is pretty clear in its findings. Why do you feel compelled to dismiss it based on what it doesn’t say? It adds to our knowledge of a real issue and you seem to be more concerned with not having to adjust your views at all.
- HillRat 5y ago
  As a potted experiment, it really doesn’t generalize well. Weighting identical candidates except for race/gender/etc. may help uncover obvious forms of discrimination, but doesn’t address the path dependency aspects. For example, in the life sciences, women get less funding and fewer staff when founding research groups, while “elite” male researchers train 10-40% fewer women than other labs; as a result, women tend to have “worse” CVs later in their career due to earlier discrimination.
- 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

0xy 5y ago

It's worth noting this has been backed up by other research. If resumes are anonymised and hiring is blind, then women and minorities actually get hired far less of the time according to multiple studies. [1] This means they are receiving positive discrimination. It's also not surprising, considering the gender balance of HR departments [2], and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs (female teachers in the UK mark boys worse for identical work, for example [3]). [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri... [2] https://www.visier.com/clarity/gender-divide-part-1/ https://www.visier.com/clarity/gender-divide-part-1/ [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672

creato 5y ago
> It's also not surprising, considering the gender balance of HR departments [2], and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs (female teachers in the UK mark boys worse for identical work, for example [3]). I agree it's not surprising, but you're making it sound a lot more dramatic than it is. Employers are getting raked over the coals by activists and the press for not being "diverse enough". Of course when all else is equal (and maybe not so equal), they'll prefer to hire women/minorities. They'll be willing to go higher in bidding wars with other employers over female/minority applicants. It's not a conspiracy by female HR departments. I've never worked anywhere that HR decided who to hire anyways.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  HR is the one telling the company to engage in systemic discrimination because a small minority of highly vocal bigots on Twitter confirm their biases. HR is the real bigot here, not a small contingent of vocal bigot “activists”.
mpweiher 5y ago
> and women tend to hold gender biased beliefs Not just teachers: Gender Differences in Automatic In-Group Bias: Why Do Women Like Women More Than Men Like Men? https://rutgerssocialcognitionlab.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/7/13979590/rudmangoodwin2004jpsp.pdf https://rutgerssocialcognitionlab.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/7...

tootahe45 5y ago

Seeing under-qualified women who were winging it the whole way through their degree get top jobs straight out of uni, then getting rejected from the same firms myself, had me very jaded on this subject. Also missed an internship i really wanted, instead of automating key processes for the company they ended up doing literally nothing the whole time they were there (they barely figured out the basics of Powershell by the end of the internship (the company wanted it done in Powershell)). This led to depression and a year of me not even bothering to seek employment. Sorry if this comment is pointless, just needed to vent. My personal view is that it's not about being a woman but about being a well socialized 'cultural fit'. Almost all women i meet are well socialized, only a minority of men my age seem to fit into this category though.

foobiter 5y ago
are you trying to say that a bias towards hiring women in academia means more incompetent women are hired? that’s a rather unfair leap to take!
throwamwayrnrkd 5y ago
Don't apologize. It's healthy to vent in low-stakes settings, and to recognize that you're emotional at the time. I hope that you take another look at the job market. Sometimes you get knocked down through no fault of your own. The people who you are frustrated with have probably experienced that in different ways, but it's never pleasant. You and your talents are valuable, and luck is a big part of life. Keep at it - comparing other peoples' successes or failures to your own is a hedonic treadmill.
radu_floricica 5y ago
How would you go about becoming a better cultural fit? I'm asking with an open mind here, and knowing two things: just telling yourself "you need to be more social" has, if anything, the opposite effect. And God, do I remember hating the feeling. And the second: I did it. Wasn't a huge difference, but went from mostly INTJ to mostly ENTJ over about 20 years. Unfortunately, 20 years is too long to be able to put my finger on something and say "this worked". If I were to give a hint, I'd say that context matters. Probably the most dramatic change was from being literally friendless for a few years to hosting parties, simply because I found a social group with common interests (and very common flaws). Also in the context category, I'd say competence helps a lot. You know that "Hermione" stereotype where you can only interact with people by helping them? It actually works. It takes many years, but eventually helping should lead to "working with" and eventually to "leading". Mind the "many years" part though.

bopbeepboop 5y ago

Yes, systemic misandry is real. Two generations of men have grown up with it.

ralusek 5y ago

Social justice initiatives don't advocate for blind hiring, they apply what they consider to be a "corrective" bias. Very few people who have been responsible for hiring engineers in SV would disagree with the premise of the study, although many would argue that there's nothing wrong with it.