3 ms·
It seems to be quite the contrary to what you state: I hear from female colleagues (professors at CMU no less) all the time that their work is subjected to much
by titzer 4y ago
It seems to be quite the contrary to what you state: I hear from female colleagues (professors at CMU no less) all the time that their work is subjected to much greater scrutiny and harsher criticism than work by their male counterparts. To withstand a much greater volume and abrasiveness of attacks, work by women has to be higher quality and nearly unassailable. That the article might have amped up a sexism angle for buzz is one issue, but the underlying dynamic frankly isn't talked about enough. Was it the case here? Hard to know.
> I'll assume from this sentence they are imposter women who shouldn't be in computer science.
I honestly don't know if you meant that ironically or sarcastically, but holy flippety bippity, we need no such attitudes and certainly no such comments to mess up the culture even more. At all. If you think it's funny or insightful, it isn't.
- rowanG077 4y agoThat's what happens if you allow positive discrimination. People no longer trust the system since someone might have come into a position without being capable. People are forced to start scrutinizing members of the positively discriminated group more.
- titzer 4y agoHaving been a part of many hiring processes, positive discrimination is a complete mirage. Hiring unqualified, below-par candidates for diversity is something that I have never seen happen. Done right, hiring for diversity means better outreach and actively fighting cognitive biases (ironically) like the one you're alluding to, and the OP has gone all-in on. It's an utter fallacy that minority groups are imposters by default.
- rowanG077 4y agoIt's not that members of positively discriminated groups(you use minorities here but thats completely wrong, asians for example are a minority but are strongly discriminated against) are imposters by default. It's just that the probability is significantly higher. On the other side of the coin: If you see an asian stem person for example you know for sure they were the cream of the crop since they had everything against them. This both reinforces stereotypes held by society and in the long run I expect it to only make things worse.
- tacitusarc 4y agoI've seen it once. I imagine it is highly dependent on the company, and not terribly common.
- HarryHirsch 4y agoThe outcomes of positive discrimination are positively toxic. Storytime: just yesterday a candidate from a visibly marginalized group gave a research talk, and I caught myself thinking "holy shit this isn't a political candidate". It's easy to arrive at this dark spot when you have seen the media promote one political candidate too much.
- titzer 4y agoAnd what did you think the last time you saw a (bad) research talk by a member of a non-marginalized group?
- HarryHirsch 4y agoThat is not relevant here.
- titzer 4y agoSure it is! If you think something substantially different solely because of someone's appearance or group status, then that's the very definition of a cognitive bias. If that makes you uncomfortable to even consider that possibility, then by all means, keep reinforcing that bias by not thinking about how you might be treating people differently because of something they cannot control. If someone's a bad researcher or gives a bad talk, no need to jump to conclusions about hiring processes, imposters, reverse racism, positive discrimination, and whatever else. That's the real toxicity.
- wkearney99 4y agoYes,it is. You're just dead wrong here.
- eternityforest 4y agoQuite often whenever I've worked with women, their work was in fact extremely high quality and unassailable. Definitely seems to be true.