6 ms·

That the gender of names matters in correspondence reminds me of an anecdote I heard about two people, a man and a woman, doing the same job supporting clients

by mcv 3y ago

That the gender of names matters in correspondence reminds me of an anecdote I heard about two people, a man and a woman, doing the same job supporting clients or customers of the company. Their boss was unhappy with the woman's performance, because she took much longer to do the same work as the man. Then, one day, the woman suddenly worked much faster and everything went much easier. At the same time, the man had a much harder time and customers were weirdly stubborn and obstructive. Turns out they were accidentally mailing under each other's name: the woman used the man's name, making customers much more willing to accept her expertise, while the man used the woman's name, making customers question everything he said. There's a lot of that kind of subtle sexism in our society that goes way deeper than mere equal rights. How can you possibly control customers taking you seriously or not based on your name? Should all women (and possibly people with non-western names, who can run into similar issues) work under fake names?

verisimi 3y ago
[flagged]
- mcv 3y ago
  They're sides of the same coin; both examples of people[0] not taking women seriously, not treating them as equals. The fact that there are cases where women can benefit from this inequality doesn't change the root issue: that a lot of people[0] still don't take women seriously in various ways. But especially having your professionality and expertise questioned constantly in the work you do every day must be extremely tiring and potentially harmful to your career. Does getting out of the occasional traffic ticket really make up for that? Edit: [0] I used to have "men" instead of "people" here, but it's also possible for women to take women less seriously than men in a professional setting. It is in fact also possible to take men less seriously than women in some situations, though that seems to happen more in cases involving raising children. In most professional settings, the common prejudice tends to favour men.
  - verisimi 3y ago
    You're missing the point of what I'm saying I think. The idea of 'equal' is a false one because things aren't equal, can never be equal. It sounds good to say 'equal' but its just not the way humans are. Neither men nor women are perfect. No individual is perfect. Now you can force and harass people to do this or that.. but what you are doing is making everyone unhappy - people will be unable to act naturally and will never never be themselves. I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes. The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense - no one knows what this is - we are not gods in fact. Forcing others to adopt such an idea is certainly wrong though - we can say that much. Manipulating others, indoctrinating them will surely make people unhappy - men and women - for who can say what is right for others?
    - mcv 3y ago
      Obviously everybody is different. No two people are the same. No two men are the same either. But that doesn't mean that in normal social interaction, and especially professional interaction, people do deserve the same level of upfront respect and trust. At least until those are squandered by their own actual actions. But instead, it's, even now, still too common that some people get denied that respect based on prejudice about gender or race, rather than their own actions. > Now you can force and harass people to do this or that. You can set certain professional standards within a company, community, field or industry, but the issue in this example is that the difference in performance was caused by the prejudice from the customers, and that's not something you can control. > I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes. But how can you do that when people are being held back from being their natural selves by unfair prejudice? And educating customers is hard to do when it might be a completely different customer every time. > The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense Which is why nobody is talking about that. I'm talking about obstacles that are needlessly holding people back, and about what can be done to remove those obstacles. Using fake names is an ugly fix; one that appears dishonest and doesn't really address the underlying prejudice, but it does mitigate the immediate symptoms of that prejudice. I totally agree that forcing and indoctrinating is wrong, but what do you do if people have already been indoctrinated, and as a result are forcing other people in a way that restricts them both?
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Here's a list of observations I've made over the years that make this such a difficult thing to talk about: 1. People love to rank things. The moment you say two things are unequal, their brain is busy trying to rank them. Things are either the same, or one is "better" than the other. A lot of people really do see everything as totally ordered sets, 2. If your selection criterion is "person who is good at X" and your pool is a fair sample of society, the person you find is more likely to be male (because you'll get an outlier). But this doesn't mean if you were to take a man and a woman at random from the same pool the man is likely to perform better at X, nor does it mean the same person would be picked given (even very slightly) broader criteria, 3. If you tell people "you will suffer prejudices etc. due to Y" then they will attribute every misfortune, every unsuccessful endeavour and, yes, downright unfair, but unrelated, treatment (e.g. nepotism etc.) to Y and are less likely to think "maybe I should just try again". I just find it really tiring to have these discussions now because you try to be reasoned and then find you're talking to someone who thinks we all fit into some neat hierarchy and can't see the massively multi-faceted nature of human beings. I also find that almost everyone is sexist (and everything else -ist) to some degree, especially a certain type of feminist. So when people talk about what we should be doing everyone is talking about a different thing (see equal opportunity vs equal outcome).
  - bazoom42 3y ago
    > I also find that almost everyone is sexist (…) especially a certain type of feminist. So sexism is bad, but raising your voice agsinst sexism is the worst?
    - globular-toast 3y ago
      I'm saying that some of these people aren't "raising their voice against sexism", they're just sexist.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- afpx 3y ago
  In my wife's experience, men are generally less friendly to women in the corporate environment. In fact, as she climbs the ladder, she finds that the men are more aggressive and hositle toward her. For her, she just wants to get the same pay and recognition as the rest of her group. For instance, she was the #1 seller of new work in 2023 in her 80-person group. Yet, she got a $10k bonus, while her male peers got promotions. (She's in the building industry, and there are only 8 women in her group).
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    > In fact, as she climbs the ladder, she finds that the men are more aggressive and hositle toward her. What if those men are more aggressive and hostile towards everyone?
    - verisimi 3y ago
      Yes, this is surely the case. The more money and power at stake, the greater the likelihood that those remaining in the competition will be especially aggressive, as this is the trait that has gotten them so far.
nerevariine 3y ago
[flagged]
- actualwitch 3y ago
  > women do worse than their male counterparts doing the same job That's enough hn for me today
- bazoom42 3y ago
  How do you know?
- mcv 3y ago
  They do worse because they're constantly questioned. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken, and using male names seems to do that to some degree. Though not completely, obviously.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Oh really? We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally their security model is better [0] - more diligent, more attuned... but anyway, mixed teams are always stronger. [0] https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Reconfigure-Report-v6-pages.pdf https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Reconfig...
  - freilanzer 3y ago
    > We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally their security model is better That seems similarly sexist to me, is it not? "We massively value men in software development because their abstraction skills are better".
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      Hence "mixed teams are always stronger", because we can positively celebrate differences and use them to our advantage. In the end, winning against the enemy is all that counts.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> Should all women (and possibly people with non-western names, who can run into similar issues) work under fake names? Some people have such a low opinion of women in tech they invent entire fake AI avatars and legends [0] rather than deal with the real thing [1]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/backlash-over-fake-female-speakers-shuts-down-developer-conference/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/backlash-over-fa... [1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=22 https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=22
- theultdev 3y ago
  That seems more like a grift of the environment promoting women. It's easier to control sockpuppets and you don't have to pay them. I don't think that person cared one way or another about women, they were just taking advantage of the environment. They would have faked male speakers had it benefitted them. (not condoning, just noting my perception)
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a specific percentage of women speakers but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota. Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not simply a low opinion of women. > Hanselman confirmed that he was "duped" by seeing the bill including at least one fake female speaker. He also confirmed that speakers like him have rules for participating in conferences, including only joining inclusive speaker lineups.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    > This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a specific percentage of women speakers You raise a good, fair objection. Maybe I shouldn't have said "low opinion". I don't know these chaps and what their opinion is. "Quotas" and suchlike certainly do those of us that advocate for diversity - but confront reality - a great disservice. > Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not simply a low opinion of women. What I think happened (and maybe watch our video, please because Mercy and Helen say things a little bit different - and why pay attention to my words, written by a man, when you can see and hear what the women actually have to say): > but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota. Where I disagree is over "the organisers couldn't find enough". No way, they could have "found enough". There's no shortage of smart, confident women who have plenty to say about working in digital tech. I've been in that situation myself as a conference organiser and had to work extra hard to convince them that they would be taken seriously and given equal voice - and could say what they want. I strongly suspect what these organisers couldn't find were women who would say the things they wanted.
vasco 3y ago
In the place I work at at some point a customer support analysis was done and female agents got way more abuse, drive-by curse words, etc. It was like a different job compared to the men.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Chris2048 3y ago
Sounds like the kind of perfect anecdote that is made up to make some point. "accidentally mailing under each other's name" doesn't sound like a thing. Incidentally, this kind of thing is easy to test, and indeed such studies have been done - I lent my name & image to such a study when I was a student, that was testing racial bias in resume applications.
dotnet00 3y ago
Putting aside the fact that this is a convenient "and then they all stood up and clapped"-esque anecdote, scammers and poor quality outsourced customer support people working under names that are blatantly fake is such a popular meme, that doing it unironically is certainly not how you would improve customer interactions.

by mcv 3y ago

verisimi 3y ago

[flagged]

mcv 3y ago
They're sides of the same coin; both examples of people[0] not taking women seriously, not treating them as equals. The fact that there are cases where women can benefit from this inequality doesn't change the root issue: that a lot of people[0] still don't take women seriously in various ways. But especially having your professionality and expertise questioned constantly in the work you do every day must be extremely tiring and potentially harmful to your career. Does getting out of the occasional traffic ticket really make up for that? Edit: [0] I used to have "men" instead of "people" here, but it's also possible for women to take women less seriously than men in a professional setting. It is in fact also possible to take men less seriously than women in some situations, though that seems to happen more in cases involving raising children. In most professional settings, the common prejudice tends to favour men.
- verisimi 3y ago
  You're missing the point of what I'm saying I think. The idea of 'equal' is a false one because things aren't equal, can never be equal. It sounds good to say 'equal' but its just not the way humans are. Neither men nor women are perfect. No individual is perfect. Now you can force and harass people to do this or that.. but what you are doing is making everyone unhappy - people will be unable to act naturally and will never never be themselves. I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes. The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense - no one knows what this is - we are not gods in fact. Forcing others to adopt such an idea is certainly wrong though - we can say that much. Manipulating others, indoctrinating them will surely make people unhappy - men and women - for who can say what is right for others?
  - mcv 3y ago
    Obviously everybody is different. No two people are the same. No two men are the same either. But that doesn't mean that in normal social interaction, and especially professional interaction, people do deserve the same level of upfront respect and trust. At least until those are squandered by their own actual actions. But instead, it's, even now, still too common that some people get denied that respect based on prejudice about gender or race, rather than their own actions. > Now you can force and harass people to do this or that. You can set certain professional standards within a company, community, field or industry, but the issue in this example is that the difference in performance was caused by the prejudice from the customers, and that's not something you can control. > I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes. But how can you do that when people are being held back from being their natural selves by unfair prejudice? And educating customers is hard to do when it might be a completely different customer every time. > The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense Which is why nobody is talking about that. I'm talking about obstacles that are needlessly holding people back, and about what can be done to remove those obstacles. Using fake names is an ugly fix; one that appears dishonest and doesn't really address the underlying prejudice, but it does mitigate the immediate symptoms of that prejudice. I totally agree that forcing and indoctrinating is wrong, but what do you do if people have already been indoctrinated, and as a result are forcing other people in a way that restricts them both?
globular-toast 3y ago
Here's a list of observations I've made over the years that make this such a difficult thing to talk about: 1. People love to rank things. The moment you say two things are unequal, their brain is busy trying to rank them. Things are either the same, or one is "better" than the other. A lot of people really do see everything as totally ordered sets, 2. If your selection criterion is "person who is good at X" and your pool is a fair sample of society, the person you find is more likely to be male (because you'll get an outlier). But this doesn't mean if you were to take a man and a woman at random from the same pool the man is likely to perform better at X, nor does it mean the same person would be picked given (even very slightly) broader criteria, 3. If you tell people "you will suffer prejudices etc. due to Y" then they will attribute every misfortune, every unsuccessful endeavour and, yes, downright unfair, but unrelated, treatment (e.g. nepotism etc.) to Y and are less likely to think "maybe I should just try again". I just find it really tiring to have these discussions now because you try to be reasoned and then find you're talking to someone who thinks we all fit into some neat hierarchy and can't see the massively multi-faceted nature of human beings. I also find that almost everyone is sexist (and everything else -ist) to some degree, especially a certain type of feminist. So when people talk about what we should be doing everyone is talking about a different thing (see equal opportunity vs equal outcome).
- bazoom42 3y ago
  > I also find that almost everyone is sexist (…) especially a certain type of feminist. So sexism is bad, but raising your voice agsinst sexism is the worst?
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    I'm saying that some of these people aren't "raising their voice against sexism", they're just sexist.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
afpx 3y ago
In my wife's experience, men are generally less friendly to women in the corporate environment. In fact, as she climbs the ladder, she finds that the men are more aggressive and hositle toward her. For her, she just wants to get the same pay and recognition as the rest of her group. For instance, she was the #1 seller of new work in 2023 in her 80-person group. Yet, she got a $10k bonus, while her male peers got promotions. (She's in the building industry, and there are only 8 women in her group).
- globular-toast 3y ago
  > In fact, as she climbs the ladder, she finds that the men are more aggressive and hositle toward her. What if those men are more aggressive and hostile towards everyone?
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Yes, this is surely the case. The more money and power at stake, the greater the likelihood that those remaining in the competition will be especially aggressive, as this is the trait that has gotten them so far.

nerevariine 3y ago

[flagged]

actualwitch 3y ago
> women do worse than their male counterparts doing the same job That's enough hn for me today
bazoom42 3y ago
How do you know?
mcv 3y ago
They do worse because they're constantly questioned. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken, and using male names seems to do that to some degree. Though not completely, obviously.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Oh really? We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally their security model is better [0] - more diligent, more attuned... but anyway, mixed teams are always stronger. [0] https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Reconfigure-Report-v6-pages.pdf https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Reconfig...
- freilanzer 3y ago
  > We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally their security model is better That seems similarly sexist to me, is it not? "We massively value men in software development because their abstraction skills are better".
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Hence "mixed teams are always stronger", because we can positively celebrate differences and use them to our advantage. In the end, winning against the enemy is all that counts.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> Should all women (and possibly people with non-western names, who can run into similar issues) work under fake names? Some people have such a low opinion of women in tech they invent entire fake AI avatars and legends [0] rather than deal with the real thing [1]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/backlash-over-fake-female-speakers-shuts-down-developer-conference/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/backlash-over-fa... [1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=22 https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=22

theultdev 3y ago
That seems more like a grift of the environment promoting women. It's easier to control sockpuppets and you don't have to pay them. I don't think that person cared one way or another about women, they were just taking advantage of the environment. They would have faked male speakers had it benefitted them. (not condoning, just noting my perception)
Manuel_D 3y ago
This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a specific percentage of women speakers but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota. Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not simply a low opinion of women. > Hanselman confirmed that he was "duped" by seeing the bill including at least one fake female speaker. He also confirmed that speakers like him have rules for participating in conferences, including only joining inclusive speaker lineups.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a specific percentage of women speakers You raise a good, fair objection. Maybe I shouldn't have said "low opinion". I don't know these chaps and what their opinion is. "Quotas" and suchlike certainly do those of us that advocate for diversity - but confront reality - a great disservice. > Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not simply a low opinion of women. What I think happened (and maybe watch our video, please because Mercy and Helen say things a little bit different - and why pay attention to my words, written by a man, when you can see and hear what the women actually have to say): > but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota. Where I disagree is over "the organisers couldn't find enough". No way, they could have "found enough". There's no shortage of smart, confident women who have plenty to say about working in digital tech. I've been in that situation myself as a conference organiser and had to work extra hard to convince them that they would be taken seriously and given equal voice - and could say what they want. I strongly suspect what these organisers couldn't find were women who would say the things they wanted.

vasco 3y ago

In the place I work at at some point a customer support analysis was done and female agents got way more abuse, drive-by curse words, etc. It was like a different job compared to the men.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Chris2048 3y ago

Sounds like the kind of perfect anecdote that is made up to make some point. "accidentally mailing under each other's name" doesn't sound like a thing. Incidentally, this kind of thing is easy to test, and indeed such studies have been done - I lent my name & image to such a study when I was a student, that was testing racial bias in resume applications.

dotnet00 3y ago

Putting aside the fact that this is a convenient "and then they all stood up and clapped"-esque anecdote, scammers and poor quality outsourced customer support people working under names that are blatantly fake is such a popular meme, that doing it unironically is certainly not how you would improve customer interactions.