3 ms·

use a name-blinded review process What's interesting is when people do the opposite. When they A/B test the name. Same content. Half the people have male names

by rmc 14y ago

use a name-blinded review process What's interesting is when people do the opposite. When they A/B test the name. Same content. Half the people have male names, half female. Now, if gender doesn't matter, and people are judged purely on their achievements, and we are in a real meritocracy, then there should be no difference, right? If there a statistically significant difference in how people treat the male vs. female applicant, then there's some bias going on. Turns out if you do that (e.g. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... ), you get men getting more job offers and getting offered more money. And this is scientists judging applicants for a science job! Something is wrong here....

Tichy 14y ago
Maybe something is wrong, but I wouldn't blindly assume it's discrimination (especially since the results are the same if women do the hiring). I wish somebody woyuld at least look into possible reasons. Personally I suspect the elephant in the room is motherhood. If there is an x% chance for the recipient of your grant to quit the profession after a couple of years, it lowers the value of your investment quite a bit.
- mjmahone17 14y ago
  Which means we should allow/push men to take paternity leaves in equal proportion to women taking maternity leaves. It's ridiculous that a) maternity leave is essentially not required in the US, and b) that women are expected to bear additional work-burdens, and men are often not allowed to bear the same child-rearing responsibilities due to lack of paternity leave.
  - makomk 14y ago
    I'll take "problems affecting women that feminism has consistently failed to tackle" for $2,000 ;-) (Seriously, it got a brief mention as such in one of bell hooks' books and everything. The solution, alas, is probably not a simple one.)
- Evbn 14y ago
  Pause for a moment to reflect on the extreme assumptions you are making.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    ???
- rmc 14y ago
  especially since the results are the same if women do the hiring You think women can't be sexist against women? Of course they can be! A member of the marginalised group can easily continue that marginalisation. I watched a recent current affairs programme about same sex marriage, and they'd found a gay man to speak out against gay marriage.
jfim 14y ago
Not if there is a difference in outcome, based on gender; if based on the same background, people from gender A publish on average four papers and people from gender B publish on average three papers during their degree, which gender does it make sense to pick? Or if you add a person from gender C to a group that was composed solely of gender D, does it increase or decrease the lab's total output because of different social dynamics? Or, if there are grants that are only accessible to gender E due to positive discrimination, does it make sense to lower their pay, since they can compensate through that grant? The paper assumes independence between the gender of the applicant and the gender of the students of the professor, which isn't the case unless you hide the applicant in a room away from the current grad students. Furthermore, the paper mentions that they used both Student's t-test and an ANOVA, both of which assume that the underlying data is normally distributed; there was no mention of a normality test anywhere in the paper. If the data is not normally distributed, which could be the case, then it's violating the normality assumption of both tests, which could potentially make them invalid. Finally, are there other confounding factors in the study? For example, if the applications were sent in different batches, the time at which they arrived does have an influence. For example, a recent paper evaluated the decision of judges for parole and found out that judges were more lenient right after lunch and were much more strict right before[1]. As they say, further study is required. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889 http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

by rmc 14y ago

Tichy 14y ago

Maybe something is wrong, but I wouldn't blindly assume it's discrimination (especially since the results are the same if women do the hiring). I wish somebody woyuld at least look into possible reasons. Personally I suspect the elephant in the room is motherhood. If there is an x% chance for the recipient of your grant to quit the profession after a couple of years, it lowers the value of your investment quite a bit.

mjmahone17 14y ago
Which means we should allow/push men to take paternity leaves in equal proportion to women taking maternity leaves. It's ridiculous that a) maternity leave is essentially not required in the US, and b) that women are expected to bear additional work-burdens, and men are often not allowed to bear the same child-rearing responsibilities due to lack of paternity leave.
- makomk 14y ago
  I'll take "problems affecting women that feminism has consistently failed to tackle" for $2,000 ;-) (Seriously, it got a brief mention as such in one of bell hooks' books and everything. The solution, alas, is probably not a simple one.)
Evbn 14y ago
Pause for a moment to reflect on the extreme assumptions you are making.
- Tichy 14y ago
  ???
rmc 14y ago
especially since the results are the same if women do the hiring You think women can't be sexist against women? Of course they can be! A member of the marginalised group can easily continue that marginalisation. I watched a recent current affairs programme about same sex marriage, and they'd found a gay man to speak out against gay marriage.

jfim 14y ago

Not if there is a difference in outcome, based on gender; if based on the same background, people from gender A publish on average four papers and people from gender B publish on average three papers during their degree, which gender does it make sense to pick? Or if you add a person from gender C to a group that was composed solely of gender D, does it increase or decrease the lab's total output because of different social dynamics? Or, if there are grants that are only accessible to gender E due to positive discrimination, does it make sense to lower their pay, since they can compensate through that grant? The paper assumes independence between the gender of the applicant and the gender of the students of the professor, which isn't the case unless you hide the applicant in a room away from the current grad students. Furthermore, the paper mentions that they used both Student's t-test and an ANOVA, both of which assume that the underlying data is normally distributed; there was no mention of a normality test anywhere in the paper. If the data is not normally distributed, which could be the case, then it's violating the normality assumption of both tests, which could potentially make them invalid. Finally, are there other confounding factors in the study? For example, if the applications were sent in different batches, the time at which they arrived does have an influence. For example, a recent paper evaluated the decision of judges for parole and found out that judges were more lenient right after lunch and were much more strict right before[1]. As they say, further study is required. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889 http://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889