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> NNNNNNNNNNNNDNNNNNNNNNNND If the pattern resembles this for a group that represents over 50% of the broader population (women and some subset of males), I'd

> NNNNNNNNNNNNDNNNNNNNNNNND If the pattern resembles this for a group that represents over 50% of the broader population (women and some subset of males), I'd argue that it's highly possible there are other, possibly discriminatory, factors at play.

Manuel_D 2y ago
So we should expect 50% men in elementary schools? How about lumberjacks? Should those be 50% women too? A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men? Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one gender at 4x the rate of the other. This line of thinking is what leads companies to set up discriminatory hiring practices in pursuit of DEI goals. The even government office of non discrimination compliance agrees: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/AAFAQs https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/AAFAQs > The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal employment opportunities for applicants and employees. It is based on the premise that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor’s workforce generally will reflect the demographics of the qualified available workforce in the relevant job market.
- galleywest200 2y ago
  One question we should ask ourselves is why a field would be dominated by men and not evenly split, or mostly women, etc. Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    Because men and women have different interests. Even if you think that socialization is the cause, the law mandates that all applicants are treated equally with respect to gender. If gender discrimination is carried out in pursuit of a 50/50 gender split, that does not make it legal. > Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other? What people feel is hard to quantify. But what we can quantify is the call back rates of male and female applicants. Tech companies are more likely to call back women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484 HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644
    - kiitos 2y ago
      The point of all of this stuff is to find a balance between evaluating applicants independently and objectively according to a well-defined set of critera -- equality of opportunity -- and producing an end result that is representational and fair in the societal sense -- equality of outcome. A good illustration of this concept is the "equality vs. equity" cartoon, with people of different heights trying to look over a fence. https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... I understand why a lot of folks, especially technically-minded folks, bias for equality of opportunity exclusively. This is essentially what a meritocracy is. There's lots of good things about equality of opportunity and meritocracies, but they also have problems, and one of those problems is that, generalizing, they both tend to reflect and reinforce pre-existing biases, and in particular implicit biases. This is exactly the kind of problem that DEI initiatives are trying to address. I don't really want to litigate the pros and cons of these two concepts, I just want to point out that they both exist, and that initiatives like DEI can have as goals improving one or the other or both. It's fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're only interested in equality of opportunity. That's probably the position that most people who are anti-DEI would take. But I think it's also fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're interested in both equality of opportunity and outcome. Both are valid.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        Using protected class as a factor in employment is prohibited nation-wide under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is no "balance" between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. The former is required by law. Using protected class as a factor in hiring doesn't become legal just because it's done in pursuit of equality of outcome. They are not both valid concepts, at least not unless you're willing to violate people's civil rights. One is what employers are legally required to do. The other is illegal discrimination. Also, think through the implications of this photo in the context of hiring: https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... What's really the difference between having a group of candidates standing on a box, and lowering the bar for those candidates? At the end of the day, whether it's standing on a box or lowering the bar the end result is the same: some candidates are considered to have met expectations despite not reaching the same heights as others. I highly encourage you to think through whether this is a good metaphor to use to justify DEI in a workplace setting.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    This question only ever seems to be asked about "desirable" fields. There doesn't seem to be as much of a push to achieve gender parity in sanitation work[1], for example. The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs are still making 300x or more of what "frontline" workers make. Why not focus on pushing for higher wages in female dominated fields like teaching or nursing? [1] https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/ https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/
    - MyHypatia 2y ago
      On Hacker news I see this question mostly asked about desirable fields. In education, there is a huge push to recruit more men. I can't speak for sanitation specifically, but I have seen efforts to get more women into stable, well paying blue collar professions.
    - kiitos 2y ago
      Rather than "desirable" I would maybe say something like "economically dominant". If the highest-paying and most-powerful careers in a society don't at least somewhat meaningfully reflect the demographics of that society, then, well, what does that demonstrate, and is that something we want to try to fix? Hopefully you can at least see the position where the answer to that last question is yes, even if you don't agree with it.
      - xxreasonable 2y ago
        It may be that hire paying fields attract men who want to be able to attract mates. That women prefer men who make more than them is pretty established in research, as is is the lack of interest in what a woman makes as income. (On average in psych studies). Why wouldn’t we expect results and society to reflect this?
        kiitos 2y ago
        It's not -- "why wouldn't we expect important career X to have way more men than women, given <whatever>" It's -- "if important career X has way more men than women, is this a good thing, at a net societal level, regardless of <whatever> that can explain why this is the case?" Nobody is looking for complete and perfect parity in all influential careers. The intent is just to make sure that, for the highest-impact careers, we should work towards making them representative of our society, as much as possible
  - caminante 2y ago
    What should the split be? Take a step back on the supply side. CS education isn't a requirement, though only 20% of CS undergrads are female.[0] I'm curious what your stance is on the swathe of asians who got negatively handicapped for checking "asian" on their college applications. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-are-too-few-women-in-computer-science-and-engineering/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-are-too-few...
- MyHypatia 2y ago
  Women didn't become the majority of pediatricians until the 2000s, so up until quite recently yes we did expect pediatricians to be 50% or more men. I get why the majority of jobs that require a lot of upper body strength (lumberjacks as you mentioned) would continue to be majority male, but in other jobs to me it seems like it's mainly networks and socialization that causes gender imbalances. There's no reason more men can't become pediatricians or school teachers. They can obviously do the job, and did in the past! For tech jobs, I often see people saying that men are more interested in numbers and things, so it's biological that men would gravitate towards tech. I used to think that sounded like a plausible explanation, but then I read that women make up 60% of accountants, and other examples like that. Seems like accounting was just more socially accepting of women, otherwise by that argument accounting would be majority male too. One example that I thought was quite interesting was that 65% of realtors are women, but in commercial real estate it's only 35% women. It would be quite a stretch to come up with a biological argument for the real estate example. In my view, a non-discriminatory hiring process is one that accounts for the very real human behaviours that 1) people feel more comfortable with people who are similar to them, and 2) when jobs skew dramatically towards one gender/race it creates a social barrier to people from outside that group getting hired and accepted by the team. If we just completely ignore how humans actually behave, we accidentally end up with a discriminatory hiring process without anyone wanting do anything bad. I have no doubt that some implementations of affirmative action are terrible and discriminatory. But I think ignoring human tendency to feel drawn to people similar to themselves, and thus inadvertently discriminate is a mistake as well.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    I'd be more than happy to have an anonymized hiring process. If you're right that in-group preference is what drives the gender disparity, we should expect an anonymized hiring process to produce an employee base that's closer to gender parity. Some companies have experimented with this [1]. But interesting no tech DEI advocate I've met in real life has been supportive of anonymized hiring. More than a few have actively disapproved, saying that anonymization tends to make the representation worse. 1. https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technical-interviews https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technic...
murderfs 2y ago
Over 60% of the U.S. population don't have college degrees, but you obviously wouldn't expect Facebook's hiring to be proportional to that. The demographics of CS graduates is much closer to what you'd expect the hiring percentages to reflect (and they do)

Manuel_D 2y ago

So we should expect 50% men in elementary schools? How about lumberjacks? Should those be 50% women too? A non discriminatory hiring process should reflect the demographics of the workers in the given field (other factors like geography matter too). Why would we expect, say, pediatricians (80% female) to have 50% men? Achieving a 50/50 split between men and women in a field that's 80% one gender requires hiring one gender at 4x the rate of the other. This line of thinking is what leads companies to set up discriminatory hiring practices in pursuit of DEI goals. The even government office of non discrimination compliance agrees: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/AAFAQs https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/AAFAQs > The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal employment opportunities for applicants and employees. It is based on the premise that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor’s workforce generally will reflect the demographics of the qualified available workforce in the relevant job market.

galleywest200 2y ago
One question we should ask ourselves is why a field would be dominated by men and not evenly split, or mostly women, etc. Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  Because men and women have different interests. Even if you think that socialization is the cause, the law mandates that all applicants are treated equally with respect to gender. If gender discrimination is carried out in pursuit of a 50/50 gender split, that does not make it legal. > Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other? What people feel is hard to quantify. But what we can quantify is the call back rates of male and female applicants. Tech companies are more likely to call back women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484 HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644
  - kiitos 2y ago
    The point of all of this stuff is to find a balance between evaluating applicants independently and objectively according to a well-defined set of critera -- equality of opportunity -- and producing an end result that is representational and fair in the societal sense -- equality of outcome. A good illustration of this concept is the "equality vs. equity" cartoon, with people of different heights trying to look over a fence. https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... I understand why a lot of folks, especially technically-minded folks, bias for equality of opportunity exclusively. This is essentially what a meritocracy is. There's lots of good things about equality of opportunity and meritocracies, but they also have problems, and one of those problems is that, generalizing, they both tend to reflect and reinforce pre-existing biases, and in particular implicit biases. This is exactly the kind of problem that DEI initiatives are trying to address. I don't really want to litigate the pros and cons of these two concepts, I just want to point out that they both exist, and that initiatives like DEI can have as goals improving one or the other or both. It's fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're only interested in equality of opportunity. That's probably the position that most people who are anti-DEI would take. But I think it's also fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're interested in both equality of opportunity and outcome. Both are valid.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      Using protected class as a factor in employment is prohibited nation-wide under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is no "balance" between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. The former is required by law. Using protected class as a factor in hiring doesn't become legal just because it's done in pursuit of equality of outcome. They are not both valid concepts, at least not unless you're willing to violate people's civil rights. One is what employers are legally required to do. The other is illegal discrimination. Also, think through the implications of this photo in the context of hiring: https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... What's really the difference between having a group of candidates standing on a box, and lowering the bar for those candidates? At the end of the day, whether it's standing on a box or lowering the bar the end result is the same: some candidates are considered to have met expectations despite not reaching the same heights as others. I highly encourage you to think through whether this is a good metaphor to use to justify DEI in a workplace setting.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  This question only ever seems to be asked about "desirable" fields. There doesn't seem to be as much of a push to achieve gender parity in sanitation work[1], for example. The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs are still making 300x or more of what "frontline" workers make. Why not focus on pushing for higher wages in female dominated fields like teaching or nursing? [1] https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/ https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/
  - MyHypatia 2y ago
    On Hacker news I see this question mostly asked about desirable fields. In education, there is a huge push to recruit more men. I can't speak for sanitation specifically, but I have seen efforts to get more women into stable, well paying blue collar professions.
  - kiitos 2y ago
    Rather than "desirable" I would maybe say something like "economically dominant". If the highest-paying and most-powerful careers in a society don't at least somewhat meaningfully reflect the demographics of that society, then, well, what does that demonstrate, and is that something we want to try to fix? Hopefully you can at least see the position where the answer to that last question is yes, even if you don't agree with it.
    - xxreasonable 2y ago
      It may be that hire paying fields attract men who want to be able to attract mates. That women prefer men who make more than them is pretty established in research, as is is the lack of interest in what a woman makes as income. (On average in psych studies). Why wouldn’t we expect results and society to reflect this?
      - kiitos 2y ago
        It's not -- "why wouldn't we expect important career X to have way more men than women, given <whatever>" It's -- "if important career X has way more men than women, is this a good thing, at a net societal level, regardless of <whatever> that can explain why this is the case?" Nobody is looking for complete and perfect parity in all influential careers. The intent is just to make sure that, for the highest-impact careers, we should work towards making them representative of our society, as much as possible
- caminante 2y ago
  What should the split be? Take a step back on the supply side. CS education isn't a requirement, though only 20% of CS undergrads are female.[0] I'm curious what your stance is on the swathe of asians who got negatively handicapped for checking "asian" on their college applications. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-are-too-few-women-in-computer-science-and-engineering/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-are-too-few...
MyHypatia 2y ago
Women didn't become the majority of pediatricians until the 2000s, so up until quite recently yes we did expect pediatricians to be 50% or more men. I get why the majority of jobs that require a lot of upper body strength (lumberjacks as you mentioned) would continue to be majority male, but in other jobs to me it seems like it's mainly networks and socialization that causes gender imbalances. There's no reason more men can't become pediatricians or school teachers. They can obviously do the job, and did in the past! For tech jobs, I often see people saying that men are more interested in numbers and things, so it's biological that men would gravitate towards tech. I used to think that sounded like a plausible explanation, but then I read that women make up 60% of accountants, and other examples like that. Seems like accounting was just more socially accepting of women, otherwise by that argument accounting would be majority male too. One example that I thought was quite interesting was that 65% of realtors are women, but in commercial real estate it's only 35% women. It would be quite a stretch to come up with a biological argument for the real estate example. In my view, a non-discriminatory hiring process is one that accounts for the very real human behaviours that 1) people feel more comfortable with people who are similar to them, and 2) when jobs skew dramatically towards one gender/race it creates a social barrier to people from outside that group getting hired and accepted by the team. If we just completely ignore how humans actually behave, we accidentally end up with a discriminatory hiring process without anyone wanting do anything bad. I have no doubt that some implementations of affirmative action are terrible and discriminatory. But I think ignoring human tendency to feel drawn to people similar to themselves, and thus inadvertently discriminate is a mistake as well.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  I'd be more than happy to have an anonymized hiring process. If you're right that in-group preference is what drives the gender disparity, we should expect an anonymized hiring process to produce an employee base that's closer to gender parity. Some companies have experimented with this [1]. But interesting no tech DEI advocate I've met in real life has been supportive of anonymized hiring. More than a few have actively disapproved, saying that anonymization tends to make the representation worse. 1. https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technical-interviews https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technic...

murderfs 2y ago

Over 60% of the U.S. population don't have college degrees, but you obviously wouldn't expect Facebook's hiring to be proportional to that. The demographics of CS graduates is much closer to what you'd expect the hiring percentages to reflect (and they do)