6 ms·

Study finds, surprisingly, that women are favored for jobs in STEM (2015)

85 points by kvee 5y ago

draw_down 5y ago
Anyone who’s been involved in STEM recruiting in recent years is likely to be less surprised.
LeroyRaz 5y ago
I find it funny how deeply sexist the representation of findings like this are. Essentially the finding is that men, according to their study, are hugely discriminated against. This lack of meritocracy is not considered or portrayed as bad, but rather described as a great step forward for women. One sees similar portrayals of e.g. the gender education gap, which massively favours girls, as a triumph, rather than a problem. Sometimes the massively higher rate of male homelessness is even made out to be about how our statistics must be biased against registering women who are slumming it by e.g. couch surfing... There seems a massive bias in the social sciences against men.
- scarmig 5y ago
  One of the things that always amuses me is when people complain about the underrepresentation of women in STEM majors. Why? It's actually 50/50. Women are only underrepresented in STEM majors in the sense that they aren't as overrepresented in them as they are in non-STEM areas of study.
  - midiguy 5y ago
    Maybe in S.... in TEM (especially computer science and engineering) there is no way it is close to 50/50.
    - scarmig 5y ago
      STEM is a category. As a whole, it's split pretty much 50/50. I'm sure you can slice and dice it into subcategories and then pick and choose those that have a higher number of men, but I can do the exact same thing with those subcategories you arbitrarily exclude to create a mirror image showing how STEM is biased against men. But it's a silly game.
  - fivea 5y ago
    > Why? It's actually 50/50. Is it, though? I'm sure it's not, and the ratio of women to men is much much lower. I know of a FANG which rejects male candidates with PhDs but goes to the extents of admitting female candidates with a single boot camp on their resume, and even then most teams barely have more than a couple of women in their ranks.
    - scarmig 5y ago
      Source: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/static/data/tab5-1.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/static/data/tab... It's true that in CS in particular, there are more men graduating than women. But people should say that instead of just "STEM." And they should probably express concern about not enough men studying e.g. biology, especially since many of the career paths that biology is a prerequisite for are relatively stable and well-paying.
- ya_throw 5y ago
  >This lack of meritocracy is not considered or portrayed as bad Oh no, it must continue until historical wrongs are righted!
rowanG077 5y ago
I'm surprised that people thought women aren't favored.
ceras 5y ago
Note that the headline is overly broad: this is just for tenure-track academic jobs. Non-academic jobs weren't in scope for this study. More specifically, it covered these academic jobs in these departments: biology, engineering, economics and psychology.
0xy 5y ago
How is this surprising? Anyone who has been even tangentially close to hiring in tech has to know this. It's very rarely written policy (because it's illegal behavior), but more of a wink wink nudge nudge, of "gee, it would be great if we could hire more women, interviewer". Some biased hiring policies exist to this day, notable in Google and other big names. Certain demographics are given a 2nd chance interview if the first is bombed, among the more implicit biases. You won't find this written anywhere, of course. The big names don't want their illegal behavior to come out during discovery. This research is also backed up by blind hiring experiments. Studies have shown that stripping name and gender from resumes results in less women and less minorities from being selected for interview (suggesting positive bias). Such blind hiring trials are quickly shuttered and swept under the rug to avoid rattling the PC orthodoxy.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Such blind hiring trials are quickly shuttered and swept under the rug to avoid rattling the PC orthodoxy. France tried it and it backfired spectacularly. It's kinda sad because it creates two categories of devs when looking at internal hiring: people you know are there on merit and people who maybe got a little bit of help from "the quota". I've heard it (in engineering only meetings) "you know this guy is solid, he went to X and he's asian so you know he's there for the right reasons". Something I have to wonder is are women and minorities... ok with this?
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    And the anti-discrimination morons look at that sort of thing and think it's discrimination against women and minorities.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    >>>Something I have to wonder is are women and minorities... ok with this? As a minority, coming from the largely blind-meritocracy of the military: NO. Same for the vast majority of minority service members and veterans that I know.
  - exolymph 5y ago
oversocialized 5y ago
Duh, just look at the duckduckgo fiasco. Tech was the one area meritocracy was the norm and now that is changing. IMO resumes and tech interviews should be screened blindly without regard to name, sex, race or college.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  What duckduckgo fiasco are you talking about?
  - oversocialized 5y ago
    https://lulz.com/community/thread/social-experiment-duckduckgo-hiring-racial-discrimination/ https://lulz.com/community/thread/social-experiment-duckduck...
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Resumes cannot be assessed without regard to sex. Which educational institution you attended is a very revealing data point (i. e. it's approximately certain that a man won't go to an all-women educational institution and vice versa), as is the combination of your other education, interests, skills and volunteering experience. It's not enough to identify everyone, but a large chunk of applicants can be unmasked this way. As for tech interviews: at some point it will have to be a face to face meeting or a video call. You literally cannot disguise male/female here unless you enforce the use of masks, voice changers, and make it difficult to see the remainder of the body (hair, posture, physical size, shape, gait).
- walkhour 5y ago
  This was done for orchestra auditions with awesome results [1], unfortunately seems like it could end now [2] due to diversity concerns. Although not impossible to do in the tech world it would involve a big change in current interview practices (e.g. no face to face interviews anymore). But in any case, this is not the direction society is going. [1] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
screye 5y ago
You have to blind to be surprised by this outcome. The lower representation of women in STEM, has to do with fewer women wanting to join STEM or Tech programs in the first place. These preferences are especially visible among domestic candidates. Given the lower supply of minority candidates and proportionally higher demand to appear diverse, major institutions will naturally end up with a bias favoring minorities in hiring on an individual basis. Now, I will admit that the bias may not always manifest in a lower bar. Often, it involves simply interviewing more minorities or making it easier for them access grants, top projects or awards that accelerate their careers. Some of these benefits are implicitly reaped by the rich and connected, irrespective of their minority status. Others might argue, that the explicit affirmative action is merely balancing a culture that innately discourages women from entering the field. That's a whole another discussion. But, to think that the observations of this study were surprising, shows priors born out of drinking political koolaid.
- yucky 5y ago
  >the bias may not always manifest in a lower bar And when it does...what should society be doing about that?
  - vnchr 5y ago
    Strict denial. The necessary cost of representation is diversifying our standards for success.
    - yucky 5y ago
      >diversifying our standards for success. AKA rewarding mediocrity.
      - vnchr 5y ago
        ;-)
- walkhour 5y ago
  > it involves simply interviewing more minorities Is this really possible? If some company with resources over-interviews and over-hires some minority, then necessarily won't there be other companies that would be forced to under-hire from that minority because those resources will have been removed from the (fixed size) hiring pool, where the minority is now even more underrepresented. This only works if the hiring pool is unbounded or there's a hidden pool of that minority somewhere that wasn't taken into account when figuring out the original percentages. It can't be done by all companies, only by a few that can take more than "their minority fair share".
haihaibye 5y ago
(2015)
aliswe 5y ago
Agree with the other comments that this is not surprising. Not putting any value in that, though. Can I make a joke? A more news worthy article would be: "Washington Post surprised that women are favored for jobs in stem"
alisonkisk 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joeman1000 5y ago
How the hell would this be a surprise? Women and ‘minorities’ (not an accurate term, but popular) are boosted in all such job positions. My cousin is the same age as me, we went to the same school, same degree, work in the same city, but it’s as if she has a rocket strapped to her arse when it comes to landing jobs. She didn’t even graduate before taking a positing as a project manager for a construction firm. I’m stuck in a delivery van.
andriesm 5y ago
GENDER WARS - just stop already. Is anyone else tired of this obsession with the genders of people? I don't care that women are underrepresented in garbage collection, construction, pilots or ceos. Or that they are now overrepresented in college. The only alarming thing is how much resources are spent on trying to socially engineer the ratios.

85 points by kvee 5y ago

Anyone who’s been involved in STEM recruiting in recent years is likely to be less surprised.

I find it funny how deeply sexist the representation of findings like this are. Essentially the finding is that men, according to their study, are hugely discriminated against. This lack of meritocracy is not considered or portrayed as bad, but rather described as a great step forward for women. One sees similar portrayals of e.g. the gender education gap, which massively favours girls, as a triumph, rather than a problem. Sometimes the massively higher rate of male homelessness is even made out to be about how our statistics must be biased against registering women who are slumming it by e.g. couch surfing... There seems a massive bias in the social sciences against men.

scarmig 5y ago
One of the things that always amuses me is when people complain about the underrepresentation of women in STEM majors. Why? It's actually 50/50. Women are only underrepresented in STEM majors in the sense that they aren't as overrepresented in them as they are in non-STEM areas of study.
- midiguy 5y ago
  Maybe in S.... in TEM (especially computer science and engineering) there is no way it is close to 50/50.
  - scarmig 5y ago
    STEM is a category. As a whole, it's split pretty much 50/50. I'm sure you can slice and dice it into subcategories and then pick and choose those that have a higher number of men, but I can do the exact same thing with those subcategories you arbitrarily exclude to create a mirror image showing how STEM is biased against men. But it's a silly game.
- fivea 5y ago
  > Why? It's actually 50/50. Is it, though? I'm sure it's not, and the ratio of women to men is much much lower. I know of a FANG which rejects male candidates with PhDs but goes to the extents of admitting female candidates with a single boot camp on their resume, and even then most teams barely have more than a couple of women in their ranks.
  - scarmig 5y ago
    Source: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/static/data/tab5-1.pdf https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/static/data/tab... It's true that in CS in particular, there are more men graduating than women. But people should say that instead of just "STEM." And they should probably express concern about not enough men studying e.g. biology, especially since many of the career paths that biology is a prerequisite for are relatively stable and well-paying.
ya_throw 5y ago
>This lack of meritocracy is not considered or portrayed as bad Oh no, it must continue until historical wrongs are righted!

rowanG077 5y ago

I'm surprised that people thought women aren't favored.

ceras 5y ago

Note that the headline is overly broad: this is just for tenure-track academic jobs. Non-academic jobs weren't in scope for this study. More specifically, it covered these academic jobs in these departments: biology, engineering, economics and psychology.

0xy 5y ago

How is this surprising? Anyone who has been even tangentially close to hiring in tech has to know this. It's very rarely written policy (because it's illegal behavior), but more of a wink wink nudge nudge, of "gee, it would be great if we could hire more women, interviewer". Some biased hiring policies exist to this day, notable in Google and other big names. Certain demographics are given a 2nd chance interview if the first is bombed, among the more implicit biases. You won't find this written anywhere, of course. The big names don't want their illegal behavior to come out during discovery. This research is also backed up by blind hiring experiments. Studies have shown that stripping name and gender from resumes results in less women and less minorities from being selected for interview (suggesting positive bias). Such blind hiring trials are quickly shuttered and swept under the rug to avoid rattling the PC orthodoxy.

908B64B197 5y ago
> Such blind hiring trials are quickly shuttered and swept under the rug to avoid rattling the PC orthodoxy. France tried it and it backfired spectacularly. It's kinda sad because it creates two categories of devs when looking at internal hiring: people you know are there on merit and people who maybe got a little bit of help from "the quota". I've heard it (in engineering only meetings) "you know this guy is solid, he went to X and he's asian so you know he's there for the right reasons". Something I have to wonder is are women and minorities... ok with this?
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  And the anti-discrimination morons look at that sort of thing and think it's discrimination against women and minorities.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>Something I have to wonder is are women and minorities... ok with this? As a minority, coming from the largely blind-meritocracy of the military: NO. Same for the vast majority of minority service members and veterans that I know.
- exolymph 5y ago

oversocialized 5y ago

Duh, just look at the duckduckgo fiasco. Tech was the one area meritocracy was the norm and now that is changing. IMO resumes and tech interviews should be screened blindly without regard to name, sex, race or college.

_-david-_ 5y ago
What duckduckgo fiasco are you talking about?
- oversocialized 5y ago
  https://lulz.com/community/thread/social-experiment-duckduckgo-hiring-racial-discrimination/ https://lulz.com/community/thread/social-experiment-duckduck...
selfhoster11 5y ago
Resumes cannot be assessed without regard to sex. Which educational institution you attended is a very revealing data point (i. e. it's approximately certain that a man won't go to an all-women educational institution and vice versa), as is the combination of your other education, interests, skills and volunteering experience. It's not enough to identify everyone, but a large chunk of applicants can be unmasked this way. As for tech interviews: at some point it will have to be a face to face meeting or a video call. You literally cannot disguise male/female here unless you enforce the use of masks, voice changers, and make it difficult to see the remainder of the body (hair, posture, physical size, shape, gait).
walkhour 5y ago
This was done for orchestra auditions with awesome results [1], unfortunately seems like it could end now [2] due to diversity concerns. Although not impossible to do in the tech world it would involve a big change in current interview practices (e.g. no face to face interviews anymore). But in any case, this is not the direction society is going. [1] https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...

screye 5y ago

You have to blind to be surprised by this outcome. The lower representation of women in STEM, has to do with fewer women wanting to join STEM or Tech programs in the first place. These preferences are especially visible among domestic candidates. Given the lower supply of minority candidates and proportionally higher demand to appear diverse, major institutions will naturally end up with a bias favoring minorities in hiring on an individual basis. Now, I will admit that the bias may not always manifest in a lower bar. Often, it involves simply interviewing more minorities or making it easier for them access grants, top projects or awards that accelerate their careers. Some of these benefits are implicitly reaped by the rich and connected, irrespective of their minority status. Others might argue, that the explicit affirmative action is merely balancing a culture that innately discourages women from entering the field. That's a whole another discussion. But, to think that the observations of this study were surprising, shows priors born out of drinking political koolaid.

yucky 5y ago
>the bias may not always manifest in a lower bar And when it does...what should society be doing about that?
- vnchr 5y ago
  Strict denial. The necessary cost of representation is diversifying our standards for success.
  - yucky 5y ago
    >diversifying our standards for success. AKA rewarding mediocrity.
    - vnchr 5y ago
      ;-)
walkhour 5y ago
> it involves simply interviewing more minorities Is this really possible? If some company with resources over-interviews and over-hires some minority, then necessarily won't there be other companies that would be forced to under-hire from that minority because those resources will have been removed from the (fixed size) hiring pool, where the minority is now even more underrepresented. This only works if the hiring pool is unbounded or there's a hidden pool of that minority somewhere that wasn't taken into account when figuring out the original percentages. It can't be done by all companies, only by a few that can take more than "their minority fair share".

haihaibye 5y ago

(2015)

aliswe 5y ago

Agree with the other comments that this is not surprising. Not putting any value in that, though. Can I make a joke? A more news worthy article would be: "Washington Post surprised that women are favored for jobs in stem"

alisonkisk 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

joeman1000 5y ago

How the hell would this be a surprise? Women and ‘minorities’ (not an accurate term, but popular) are boosted in all such job positions. My cousin is the same age as me, we went to the same school, same degree, work in the same city, but it’s as if she has a rocket strapped to her arse when it comes to landing jobs. She didn’t even graduate before taking a positing as a project manager for a construction firm. I’m stuck in a delivery van.

andriesm 5y ago

GENDER WARS - just stop already. Is anyone else tired of this obsession with the genders of people? I don't care that women are underrepresented in garbage collection, construction, pilots or ceos. Or that they are now overrepresented in college. The only alarming thing is how much resources are spent on trying to socially engineer the ratios.