5 ms·

As a male engineer, whose grandmother got PhD in Physics around 1960 when overall PhDs were more strict than today, and especially for women, I think it is both

As a male engineer, whose grandmother got PhD in Physics around 1960 when overall PhDs were more strict than today, and especially for women, I think it is both bad when women are being held back “because they should stay at home and raise a family”, and when we want to right a historic wrong by having double standards so we could hire more women in STEM roles. We need meritocracy.

wpietri 4y ago
I get that, and I have been there before. But how do you fairly judge true merit in an oppressive world? A lot of the typical ways just support or amplify existing biases. That's not to say it's impossible, but an awful lot of people crying "meritocracy" do so in defense of conspicuously unexamined hiring practices.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  Which hiring practices are those? The ones that favor women by 2:1? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Anecdotally, an executive recruiter friend I talked to recently here in Europe said that she now has to get approval from corporate headquarters in the US for a straight white male candidate.
  - DSMan195276 4y ago
    If you read that article they believe it is due to women self-selecting out of the field before ever applying for those positions. Or IE. the hiring standards for both groups are not necessarily different, but female candidates are less likely to apply and those that are willing to apply are better qualified: > Our research suggests that the mechanism resulting in women’s underrepresentation today may lie more on the supply side, in women’s decisions not to apply, than on the demand side, in antifemale bias in hiring. The perception that STEM fields continue to be inhospitable male bastions can become self-reinforcing by discouraging female applicants (26–29), thus contributing to continued underrepresentation, which in turn may obscure underlying attitudinal changes. > Thus, real-world hiring data showing a preference for women, inherently confounded and open to multiple interpretations because of lack of controls on applicant quality, experience, and lifestyle, are consistent with our experimental findings. > We hope the discovery of an overall 2:1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting-out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female underrepresentation can be addressed in part by increasing the number of women applying for tenure-track positions. Edit: Hence why this is complicated. You're clearly suggesting the 2:1 ratio indicates it must be unfair in some way, but the article itself suggests it's not. Fundamentally, you cannot assume that merit-based hiring would result in a 1:1 ratio of male/female, at least not initially.
    - drno123 4y ago
      Merit based hiring would never be 1:1, but 2:1 is enormous. I would expect something like 1.2:1 in either direction.
      - DSMan195276 4y ago
        > Merit based hiring would never be 1:1, but 2:1 is enormous. I would expect something like 1.2:1 in either direction. Aren't you now doing the same thing that's being criticized, by simply picking a ratio that "looks" good to you regardless of the underlying groups?
        mpweiher 4y ago
        "I would expect..." ≠ "It actually has to be this way"
    - mpweiher 4y ago
      > If you read that article they believe it is due I did read it. A while ago. And a lot of the angry "rebuttals" as well. From the section you quoted: "...the mechanism resulting in women’s underrepresentation..." So the "it" you refer to is not the 2:1 hiring advantage, but the underrepresentation. The rest of your comment suffers from the same misunderstanding.
      - DSMan195276 4y ago
        The point is that the mechanism behind the underrepresentation and behind the 2:1 hiring advantage is the same. Consider: The groups compared in that study are the same size, but we also agree women are underrepresented in the overall group, due to facts that likely cause less-qualified women to leave the group. What do you think happens if you then pick an equal number of men and women from both groups and compare them? Which group will have more qualified candidates? Obviously the women.
        mpweiher 4y ago

wpietri 4y ago

I get that, and I have been there before. But how do you fairly judge true merit in an oppressive world? A lot of the typical ways just support or amplify existing biases. That's not to say it's impossible, but an awful lot of people crying "meritocracy" do so in defense of conspicuously unexamined hiring practices.

mpweiher 4y ago
Which hiring practices are those? The ones that favor women by 2:1? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Anecdotally, an executive recruiter friend I talked to recently here in Europe said that she now has to get approval from corporate headquarters in the US for a straight white male candidate.
- DSMan195276 4y ago
  If you read that article they believe it is due to women self-selecting out of the field before ever applying for those positions. Or IE. the hiring standards for both groups are not necessarily different, but female candidates are less likely to apply and those that are willing to apply are better qualified: > Our research suggests that the mechanism resulting in women’s underrepresentation today may lie more on the supply side, in women’s decisions not to apply, than on the demand side, in antifemale bias in hiring. The perception that STEM fields continue to be inhospitable male bastions can become self-reinforcing by discouraging female applicants (26–29), thus contributing to continued underrepresentation, which in turn may obscure underlying attitudinal changes. > Thus, real-world hiring data showing a preference for women, inherently confounded and open to multiple interpretations because of lack of controls on applicant quality, experience, and lifestyle, are consistent with our experimental findings. > We hope the discovery of an overall 2:1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting-out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female underrepresentation can be addressed in part by increasing the number of women applying for tenure-track positions. Edit: Hence why this is complicated. You're clearly suggesting the 2:1 ratio indicates it must be unfair in some way, but the article itself suggests it's not. Fundamentally, you cannot assume that merit-based hiring would result in a 1:1 ratio of male/female, at least not initially.
  - drno123 4y ago
    Merit based hiring would never be 1:1, but 2:1 is enormous. I would expect something like 1.2:1 in either direction.
    - DSMan195276 4y ago
      > Merit based hiring would never be 1:1, but 2:1 is enormous. I would expect something like 1.2:1 in either direction. Aren't you now doing the same thing that's being criticized, by simply picking a ratio that "looks" good to you regardless of the underlying groups?
      - mpweiher 4y ago
        "I would expect..." ≠ "It actually has to be this way"
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    > If you read that article they believe it is due I did read it. A while ago. And a lot of the angry "rebuttals" as well. From the section you quoted: "...the mechanism resulting in women’s underrepresentation..." So the "it" you refer to is not the 2:1 hiring advantage, but the underrepresentation. The rest of your comment suffers from the same misunderstanding.
    - DSMan195276 4y ago
      The point is that the mechanism behind the underrepresentation and behind the 2:1 hiring advantage is the same. Consider: The groups compared in that study are the same size, but we also agree women are underrepresented in the overall group, due to facts that likely cause less-qualified women to leave the group. What do you think happens if you then pick an equal number of men and women from both groups and compare them? Which group will have more qualified candidates? Obviously the women.
      - mpweiher 4y ago