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Let's not let the outcome of this specific case affect the idea that there is an institutional bias - conscious or unconscious - against women entering and thri

Let's not let the outcome of this specific case affect the idea that there is an institutional bias - conscious or unconscious - against women entering and thriving in male-dominated fields like this one. Just as one flurry in April doesn't disprove global warming, one dismissed lawsuit doesn't disprove a deep but sometimes subtle sexism. It's the same with other powerful prejudices that have endured for centuries or millennia. There are many factors acting against women, just as there are many working against people of color, the poor, and those who do not cleave to traditional sexual or gender norms. Please do what you can to support these people in your life, in all their endeavors.

api 12y ago
As I like to put it: Sure there's people who make spurious claims, and a few who get paranoid and blame discrimination for every setback they have. But that's sort of not relevant. The existence of mis-diagnoses and hypochondriacs doesn't disprove the existence of a disease. Edit: my comment is 'meta.' I know little about this case, so I don't have a strong opinion on it.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I don't think the claims were "spurious." There was enough meat there where just because she lost doesn't mean there was no merit to her position. Also, I think she was an unsympathetic plaintiff. Being rich and sleeping with a married man shouldn't prejudice your case, but it does.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    To add to her being unsympathetic, she played politics and she played it badly. One might argue that she felt a need to play politics because she was coming from behind (being female) and that her political salvos were more penalized because of her gender (which probably was true) than they would have been if performed by men, but it makes her not an innocent victim. This shouldn't matter, insofar as she's not on trial, but it's another bias-inducing factor. The suit was not at all frivolous and, assuming Ellen Pao is rational, the fact that it existed at all is an indictment of the Valley. People don't sue ex-employers lightly, and she had John Doerr as an ally. So what I wonder is: what happened to fuck up her career so much that suing, with a mediocre case against a company that can call dozens of witnesses whom it employs, seemed the best option? It seems to suggest that the sleazy back-channeling that the Valley is constantly accused of is really there. (The idea that she was doing it for the money, because of her husband's finances, I find absurd. I could be wrong but I didn't see it as remotely likely that she'd get $16M, even if she won.) This is the story that piques my curiosity, because if I were her, I would have taken the severance and John Doerr's recommendation (and a contractually-mandated positive reference) as the ticket anywhere I wanted to go. What was done to her reputation that made that not possible? (Or am I completely wrong in this analysis?)
    - stolio 12y ago
      > (The idea that she was doing it for the money, because of her husband's finances, I find absurd. I could be wrong but I didn't see it as remotely likely that she'd get $16M, even if she won.) Don't be fooled, there's still money in what she's doing. Plus other forms of personal gain. I doubt this hurts her with reddit given their actions over the past few years and this positions her to be a hero to a very powerful and growing political movement. Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In has sold 1.6 million copies, if she gets $1.50/book thats $2.4 million. Plus $50-100k for speaking engagements, plus seminars, other branding, revenue streams, etc. She's a billionaire so if she ends up making $10+ million through her activism that's no big deal, but it shows there's decent money to be made there. "Professional activist" is a now career. Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter to expose male privilege in video games brought in over $150k, originally it was for under $10k but over time she's been able to monetize her victimization in the sense that the more she's "victimized" the more her supporters give to her so she can continue fighting the power. Her non-profit brought in almost $400k during fourth-quarter of 2014 because of gamergate. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/01/24/anita-sarkeesian-releases-kickstarter-breakdown-raised-440000-in-2014/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/01/24/anita-sarkee...) Her career hasn't been hurt by discrimination, it's been made by it. It's like racism and the black community, it's really bad for most of them but then there are the Public Enemy's and Al Sharpton's who thrive on it. Is Al Sharpton a victim of racism? In a way, but he's also a major beneficiary of it. Is Pao a victim of gender discrimination? Maybe, but she's positioned to capitalize on it either way. Could she make more than the $400k severance package she was offered? I wouldn't doubt it. Will it make up for lost income? That's only a question if reddit let's her go, which doesn't look likely: http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-interim-for-long/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-int... edit: ah, yes. The obligatory "you're not contributing to the discussion the way I want you to so I'm going to misuse the downvote button to hide your comment" downvotes.
      - dominotw 12y ago
        >"Professional activist" is a now career There is also a whole new careers like 'diversity consultants' who coach on men on 'ally skills'. I am not making this up.
gizmo686 12y ago
At the same time, we should avoid using specific cases as proof that there is institutional bias, just as we should avoid using specific storms as proof of climate change. Of course, then all we have to work with is overwhelming statistical evidence for both issues, and that never convinces anyone.
- nostromo 12y ago
  Do we have statistical evidence of this bias? I'm not doubting we do, I would just like to explore it. There are many professions that are dominated by a single gender or a single ethnicity. That's not necessarily evidence of bias. There are lots of ways to explore this. For example, sending identical resumes with female and male names for engineering jobs and measuring requests for interviews.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - et1337 12y ago
    More data would be nice to have. In lieu of that, I enjoyed Scott Adams' verdict on gender bias: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gender-bias-in-the-workplace http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gend...
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      I'm not sure I'd trust the guy who wrote "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently" on gender issues.
      - shkkmo 12y ago
        I read a bit of his stuff and he seems reasonably cogent (with perhaps a bias towards ignoring the cultural basis of gender roles), but with a tendency for poorly considered word choices that get him into trouble. The full context for your quote is here: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881506316/im-a-what http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881506316/im-a-what He addresses your direct quote explicitly lower down the page: "I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar."
matt4077 12y ago
There is also a difference in what is legal and what is acceptable. A good example from this case is not inviting her to an even with Al Gore because women "would kill the buzz". It's probably legal as long as it isn't part of a very explicit larger scheme to discriminate women, but it's plainly wrong. I also don't get how, exactly, women are buzzkillers. But maybe I just don't speak bro.
- LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
  > But maybe I just don't speak bro. No, but you've managed to master condescending twat without issue.
- anaximander 12y ago
  It's possible that some men, especially the very successful/powerful, are afraid that a woman will file suit over something which, despite being said without malice, was offensive to the listener. Edit: I'm not necessarily defending their decision to discriminate based on gender. I'm only trying to suggest a motive for their bad behavior.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    As a man, I've known groups of men to occasionally make crude yet seemingly hilarious remarks that they would not make in the presence of women. If your line of thinking on the subject is correct, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the answer. In the presence of men, other men make men-style remarks. In the presence of women, other women make women-style remarks. I'm not invited to my wife's girls nights with her friends, and she doesn't seem too torn up when she's not on the porch smoking cigars with me and the guys. The reason for that is we want to be able to have gender-specific conversations. But like you mentioned, if this is happening in the workplace, that's completely wrong for anyone to do. Especially when it's preventing a woman from meeting the former vice president just because she's a woman. Is one woman at a men's only social party a buzz kill? Perhaps. Is one woman at a business meeting a buzz kill? Certainly yes, because there really should be more.
    - 12y ago
michaelochurch 12y ago
Without fanning class war and just to state a fact, Ellen Pao was able to afford top-notch lawyers, which you'd need to go against KPCB given what they'll do to your career. Only "the 1%" can do what she did and keep their careers and finances (after legal bills) intact. That doesn't invalidate her case at all but it informs the selection because, honestly, hers was one of the weaker ones. (That's not to begrudge her for filing it. I think well of her for doing so.) If more people (who are likely to have stronger cases) had such access, you'd see much stronger cases hitting the Valley elite. It's similar to the Michael Brown case. On inspection, we found that his was one of the weaker cases when it comes to racial harassment by police. It doesn't invalidate the issue or the grievance. Pao v. Kleiner was going to be a close call. I wanted to find KP guilty and, looking at the evidence, it seemed that the worst interpretation that I could summon was of negligence. They did fail in allowing her to recover her reputation after Mr. Nazre's attack on her. They did have a performance review system that allowed him to damage her professional reputation out-of-band to the point where she couldn't recover. That was a major moral failure on their part. (On the other hand, they seemed decent in offering a transition plan, and I'm surprised that John Doerr wasn't able to fix her career on an external vector, making all parties happy.) Gender discrimination? A tough call. Probably not, to be honest. Plenty of people have their reputations ruined because of irrelevancies and political chicanery. Management being bad at its job (in this case, performance appraisal) is not the same thing as a Civil Rights Act violation. Is Silicon Valley corrupt as hell and a bit sexist? Sure. Is it likely that Ellen Pao's "personality conflicts" were, to some degree, gendered? Yes. Did Kleiner Perkins violate the CRA? It's not so clear. But I really don't want anyone to interpret this to mean either (a) that Valley meritocracy is vindicated, or (b) even that this suit was "frivolous", because it clearly wasn't.
- rayiner 12y ago
  This is an excellent analysis and I'm shocked you were down-voted. The selection problem here is very real.
  - jckt 12y ago
    I think he was downvoted because some people can't see further than his Michael Brown analogy.
topynate 12y ago
A nice sentiment, but not really logical. An outcome in Pao's favour would have been taken as evidence for institutional bias; by conservation of probability, an outcome against must be taken as evidence against.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Actually that's the opposite of logic. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
  - kevinskii 12y ago
    The OP didn't use the word "proof". He or she is correct that absence of evidence is indeed evidence (but not proof) of absence.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      Actually, no absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in the general case; absence of evidence for a position can coincide with absence of evidence against the position.
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        The conspicuous absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
  - defen 12y ago
    I think the point is that people (mostly ones who don't really know the details of what actually happened) will just use the court outcome to advance their own pre-existing biases, regardless of what the court says. Examples: 1) I am biased against Ms. Pao, and she wins: "This just goes to show that women can sue for anything these days, and win millions!" 2) I am biased against Ms. Pao and she loses: "See, women will sue you for discrimination even if you didn't do anything wrong!" 3) I am biased in favor of Ms. Pao and she wins: "See? This is clear proof that the bias against women goes all the way to the top of Silicon Valley!" 4) I am biased in favor of Ms. Pao and she loses: "See, this is proof that businesses can discriminate against women and not suffer any consequences." Given that, in order for me to take someone's claim seriously, I would want them to pre-commit - before the result is announced - to a "court outcome interpretation." I don't care whether that interpretation is "regardless of what happens, the court outcome is irrelevant" or "I will accept the court ruling as 100% true and correct" - I just want consistency.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
Sure, like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in medicine... oh, wait. Err... Like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in law... Um... Well, like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in polit... Hmm... The credibility of the claim that there's overwhelming institutional bias against women is dependent on understanding why in cases where there unquestionably was considerable bias--like medicine, law and politics--the bias has either dropped dramatically or been reversed in the past half-century to the point where no one anywhere is the least bit surprised to see a female doctor, lawyer, or politician. The absence of women in tech may be due to many factors. Given we have seen how easily bias has been overcome in other areas, we should at least keep our minds open to alternative models. One such model is the observation that women remain under-represented in areas where the working conditions are terrible, the career prospects are nil, and the tangible effect of their efforts on others are zero, all of which conditions pertain to tech, but not to medicine, law or politics. This suggests that maybe we ought to be paying attention to the conditions men work under in tech, rather than making this out to be a man-woman thing. I'm not claiming this is necessarily true, but nor do I think it is entirely implausible, and hope people concerned with these things will at least be open to alternative explanations.
- magicalist 12y ago
  > One such model is the observation that women remain under-represented in areas where the working conditions are terrible, the career prospects are nil, and the tangible effect of their efforts on others are zero, all of which conditions pertain to tech, but not to medicine, law or politics. I think you have an over romanticized view of the vast majority of careers in medicine, law, and politics.
  - axlprose 12y ago
    That may be true, but all it would take for OP's argument to be valid would be for much of the rest of society to share the same misinformed beliefs about these fields as well.
chatmasta 12y ago
Institutional bias will always exist as long as humans create the institutions. Humans have bias. We are born, grow, and develop within the finite set of existing social clusters. Each one of us is just another node on the worldwide social graph. We are all a node on the same graph, but every one of us is in a different section of the graph. Each of us has a "max flow" of influence that we can direct out of our node, into any given other node. Influence affects society, and it can be passed down within families. Families are small components of the social graph who can collude with each other. Assuming the "nodes" with the largest influence want to pass it to their heirs, then influence will naturally accumulate within families. The neighbors of max influencers need capacity to support the flow from the max influencers. Therefore the neighbors also have influence, and thus a component of the worldwide social graph becomes a concentrated subsection of wealth. One way for families and their neighbors to protect influence is to form institutions. Literally, to institutionalize their influence. By definition, institutions are founded around a biased component of the social graph. It should be no surprise that they retain their structure across generations. The only way to get a truly "fair" institution would be to seed it with a random subgraph of the entire worldwide population and hope that it could not only survive that heterogenity, but preserve it. We cannot force diversity into institutions like some bandaid solution to inequality. It needs to exist from the moment of creation, or else it never will.
- brighteyes 12y ago
  > The only way to get a truly "fair" institution would be to seed it with a random subgraph of the entire worldwide population and hope that it could not only survive that heterogenity, but preserve it. You have given in to the worst assumption about humanity, that we are hopelessly and irredeemably tribal. That we will only support our personal clan. And therefore the only way to achieve diversity is to start out diverse; everyone will remain despicably tribal in their loyalties, but at least power will have started out spread around. I think that's a terrible perspective to take on humanity. Yes, we can be tribal. But progress has been incredible. For example, women have come from not being able to vote just a century ago, to being a large majority on college campuses. They did that because humans can appreciate higher principles of fairness and giving people a chance regardless of their personal attributes. > [Diversity] needs to exist from the moment of creation, or else it never will. This is so bleak, and so easily disproven (by lots of fields, including prestigious ones), that it makes me sad even to read it.
multiplicity 12y ago
In other words: "Women, blacks and gays need handouts, because they are incapable of succeeding on their own. I am not a sexist, racist or homophobe despite this." Insanity.
pyrocat 12y ago
I can't express how happy I am that this is the top comment right now.
pervycreeper 12y ago
>idea that there is an institutional bias Out of curiosity, just what kind of evidence would you need in order to falsify this proposition?
chernevik 12y ago
Absolutely. The idea that the pious and self-righteous are more interested in moral superiority than in actually helping any one is deeply hurtful. The pretentious have a right to be taken just as seriously as anyone else.
tsotha 12y ago
>Let's not let the outcome of this specific case affect the idea that there is an institutional bias - conscious or unconscious - against women entering and thriving in male-dominated fields like this one. Where is the actual evidence this is true?
hysterix 12y ago
Wow. Can you step back for half a second and really examine what you're saying? You're saying, these people you are bringing up: women, minorities, etc. are weak, are not strong enough to pick themselves up, and require people to, "do what you can to support these people in your life, in all their endeavours". Can you turn your white guilt off for two seconds and realize maybe these people don't require your saving?

api 12y ago

As I like to put it: Sure there's people who make spurious claims, and a few who get paranoid and blame discrimination for every setback they have. But that's sort of not relevant. The existence of mis-diagnoses and hypochondriacs doesn't disprove the existence of a disease. Edit: my comment is 'meta.' I know little about this case, so I don't have a strong opinion on it.

rayiner 12y ago
I don't think the claims were "spurious." There was enough meat there where just because she lost doesn't mean there was no merit to her position. Also, I think she was an unsympathetic plaintiff. Being rich and sleeping with a married man shouldn't prejudice your case, but it does.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  To add to her being unsympathetic, she played politics and she played it badly. One might argue that she felt a need to play politics because she was coming from behind (being female) and that her political salvos were more penalized because of her gender (which probably was true) than they would have been if performed by men, but it makes her not an innocent victim. This shouldn't matter, insofar as she's not on trial, but it's another bias-inducing factor. The suit was not at all frivolous and, assuming Ellen Pao is rational, the fact that it existed at all is an indictment of the Valley. People don't sue ex-employers lightly, and she had John Doerr as an ally. So what I wonder is: what happened to fuck up her career so much that suing, with a mediocre case against a company that can call dozens of witnesses whom it employs, seemed the best option? It seems to suggest that the sleazy back-channeling that the Valley is constantly accused of is really there. (The idea that she was doing it for the money, because of her husband's finances, I find absurd. I could be wrong but I didn't see it as remotely likely that she'd get $16M, even if she won.) This is the story that piques my curiosity, because if I were her, I would have taken the severance and John Doerr's recommendation (and a contractually-mandated positive reference) as the ticket anywhere I wanted to go. What was done to her reputation that made that not possible? (Or am I completely wrong in this analysis?)
  - stolio 12y ago
    > (The idea that she was doing it for the money, because of her husband's finances, I find absurd. I could be wrong but I didn't see it as remotely likely that she'd get $16M, even if she won.) Don't be fooled, there's still money in what she's doing. Plus other forms of personal gain. I doubt this hurts her with reddit given their actions over the past few years and this positions her to be a hero to a very powerful and growing political movement. Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In has sold 1.6 million copies, if she gets $1.50/book thats $2.4 million. Plus $50-100k for speaking engagements, plus seminars, other branding, revenue streams, etc. She's a billionaire so if she ends up making $10+ million through her activism that's no big deal, but it shows there's decent money to be made there. "Professional activist" is a now career. Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter to expose male privilege in video games brought in over $150k, originally it was for under $10k but over time she's been able to monetize her victimization in the sense that the more she's "victimized" the more her supporters give to her so she can continue fighting the power. Her non-profit brought in almost $400k during fourth-quarter of 2014 because of gamergate. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/01/24/anita-sarkeesian-releases-kickstarter-breakdown-raised-440000-in-2014/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/01/24/anita-sarkee...) Her career hasn't been hurt by discrimination, it's been made by it. It's like racism and the black community, it's really bad for most of them but then there are the Public Enemy's and Al Sharpton's who thrive on it. Is Al Sharpton a victim of racism? In a way, but he's also a major beneficiary of it. Is Pao a victim of gender discrimination? Maybe, but she's positioned to capitalize on it either way. Could she make more than the $400k severance package she was offered? I wouldn't doubt it. Will it make up for lost income? That's only a question if reddit let's her go, which doesn't look likely: http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-interim-for-long/ http://fortune.com/2014/11/13/reddits-new-ceo-may-not-be-int... edit: ah, yes. The obligatory "you're not contributing to the discussion the way I want you to so I'm going to misuse the downvote button to hide your comment" downvotes.
    - dominotw 12y ago
      >"Professional activist" is a now career There is also a whole new careers like 'diversity consultants' who coach on men on 'ally skills'. I am not making this up.

gizmo686 12y ago

At the same time, we should avoid using specific cases as proof that there is institutional bias, just as we should avoid using specific storms as proof of climate change. Of course, then all we have to work with is overwhelming statistical evidence for both issues, and that never convinces anyone.

nostromo 12y ago
Do we have statistical evidence of this bias? I'm not doubting we do, I would just like to explore it. There are many professions that are dominated by a single gender or a single ethnicity. That's not necessarily evidence of bias. There are lots of ways to explore this. For example, sending identical resumes with female and male names for engineering jobs and measuring requests for interviews.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- et1337 12y ago
  More data would be nice to have. In lieu of that, I enjoyed Scott Adams' verdict on gender bias: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gender-bias-in-the-workplace http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gend...
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    I'm not sure I'd trust the guy who wrote "The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently" on gender issues.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      I read a bit of his stuff and he seems reasonably cogent (with perhaps a bias towards ignoring the cultural basis of gender roles), but with a tendency for poorly considered word choices that get him into trouble. The full context for your quote is here: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881506316/im-a-what http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881506316/im-a-what He addresses your direct quote explicitly lower down the page: "I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar."

matt4077 12y ago

There is also a difference in what is legal and what is acceptable. A good example from this case is not inviting her to an even with Al Gore because women "would kill the buzz". It's probably legal as long as it isn't part of a very explicit larger scheme to discriminate women, but it's plainly wrong. I also don't get how, exactly, women are buzzkillers. But maybe I just don't speak bro.

LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
> But maybe I just don't speak bro. No, but you've managed to master condescending twat without issue.
anaximander 12y ago
It's possible that some men, especially the very successful/powerful, are afraid that a woman will file suit over something which, despite being said without malice, was offensive to the listener. Edit: I'm not necessarily defending their decision to discriminate based on gender. I'm only trying to suggest a motive for their bad behavior.
- freehunter 12y ago
  As a man, I've known groups of men to occasionally make crude yet seemingly hilarious remarks that they would not make in the presence of women. If your line of thinking on the subject is correct, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the answer. In the presence of men, other men make men-style remarks. In the presence of women, other women make women-style remarks. I'm not invited to my wife's girls nights with her friends, and she doesn't seem too torn up when she's not on the porch smoking cigars with me and the guys. The reason for that is we want to be able to have gender-specific conversations. But like you mentioned, if this is happening in the workplace, that's completely wrong for anyone to do. Especially when it's preventing a woman from meeting the former vice president just because she's a woman. Is one woman at a men's only social party a buzz kill? Perhaps. Is one woman at a business meeting a buzz kill? Certainly yes, because there really should be more.
  - 12y ago

michaelochurch 12y ago

Without fanning class war and just to state a fact, Ellen Pao was able to afford top-notch lawyers, which you'd need to go against KPCB given what they'll do to your career. Only "the 1%" can do what she did and keep their careers and finances (after legal bills) intact. That doesn't invalidate her case at all but it informs the selection because, honestly, hers was one of the weaker ones. (That's not to begrudge her for filing it. I think well of her for doing so.) If more people (who are likely to have stronger cases) had such access, you'd see much stronger cases hitting the Valley elite. It's similar to the Michael Brown case. On inspection, we found that his was one of the weaker cases when it comes to racial harassment by police. It doesn't invalidate the issue or the grievance. Pao v. Kleiner was going to be a close call. I wanted to find KP guilty and, looking at the evidence, it seemed that the worst interpretation that I could summon was of negligence. They did fail in allowing her to recover her reputation after Mr. Nazre's attack on her. They did have a performance review system that allowed him to damage her professional reputation out-of-band to the point where she couldn't recover. That was a major moral failure on their part. (On the other hand, they seemed decent in offering a transition plan, and I'm surprised that John Doerr wasn't able to fix her career on an external vector, making all parties happy.) Gender discrimination? A tough call. Probably not, to be honest. Plenty of people have their reputations ruined because of irrelevancies and political chicanery. Management being bad at its job (in this case, performance appraisal) is not the same thing as a Civil Rights Act violation. Is Silicon Valley corrupt as hell and a bit sexist? Sure. Is it likely that Ellen Pao's "personality conflicts" were, to some degree, gendered? Yes. Did Kleiner Perkins violate the CRA? It's not so clear. But I really don't want anyone to interpret this to mean either (a) that Valley meritocracy is vindicated, or (b) even that this suit was "frivolous", because it clearly wasn't.

rayiner 12y ago
This is an excellent analysis and I'm shocked you were down-voted. The selection problem here is very real.
- jckt 12y ago
  I think he was downvoted because some people can't see further than his Michael Brown analogy.

topynate 12y ago

A nice sentiment, but not really logical. An outcome in Pao's favour would have been taken as evidence for institutional bias; by conservation of probability, an outcome against must be taken as evidence against.

rayiner 12y ago
Actually that's the opposite of logic. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
- kevinskii 12y ago
  The OP didn't use the word "proof". He or she is correct that absence of evidence is indeed evidence (but not proof) of absence.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Actually, no absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in the general case; absence of evidence for a position can coincide with absence of evidence against the position.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      The conspicuous absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
- defen 12y ago
  I think the point is that people (mostly ones who don't really know the details of what actually happened) will just use the court outcome to advance their own pre-existing biases, regardless of what the court says. Examples: 1) I am biased against Ms. Pao, and she wins: "This just goes to show that women can sue for anything these days, and win millions!" 2) I am biased against Ms. Pao and she loses: "See, women will sue you for discrimination even if you didn't do anything wrong!" 3) I am biased in favor of Ms. Pao and she wins: "See? This is clear proof that the bias against women goes all the way to the top of Silicon Valley!" 4) I am biased in favor of Ms. Pao and she loses: "See, this is proof that businesses can discriminate against women and not suffer any consequences." Given that, in order for me to take someone's claim seriously, I would want them to pre-commit - before the result is announced - to a "court outcome interpretation." I don't care whether that interpretation is "regardless of what happens, the court outcome is irrelevant" or "I will accept the court ruling as 100% true and correct" - I just want consistency.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

Sure, like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in medicine... oh, wait. Err... Like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in law... Um... Well, like there's overwhelming institutional bias against women in polit... Hmm... The credibility of the claim that there's overwhelming institutional bias against women is dependent on understanding why in cases where there unquestionably was considerable bias--like medicine, law and politics--the bias has either dropped dramatically or been reversed in the past half-century to the point where no one anywhere is the least bit surprised to see a female doctor, lawyer, or politician. The absence of women in tech may be due to many factors. Given we have seen how easily bias has been overcome in other areas, we should at least keep our minds open to alternative models. One such model is the observation that women remain under-represented in areas where the working conditions are terrible, the career prospects are nil, and the tangible effect of their efforts on others are zero, all of which conditions pertain to tech, but not to medicine, law or politics. This suggests that maybe we ought to be paying attention to the conditions men work under in tech, rather than making this out to be a man-woman thing. I'm not claiming this is necessarily true, but nor do I think it is entirely implausible, and hope people concerned with these things will at least be open to alternative explanations.

magicalist 12y ago
> One such model is the observation that women remain under-represented in areas where the working conditions are terrible, the career prospects are nil, and the tangible effect of their efforts on others are zero, all of which conditions pertain to tech, but not to medicine, law or politics. I think you have an over romanticized view of the vast majority of careers in medicine, law, and politics.
- axlprose 12y ago
  That may be true, but all it would take for OP's argument to be valid would be for much of the rest of society to share the same misinformed beliefs about these fields as well.

chatmasta 12y ago

Institutional bias will always exist as long as humans create the institutions. Humans have bias. We are born, grow, and develop within the finite set of existing social clusters. Each one of us is just another node on the worldwide social graph. We are all a node on the same graph, but every one of us is in a different section of the graph. Each of us has a "max flow" of influence that we can direct out of our node, into any given other node. Influence affects society, and it can be passed down within families. Families are small components of the social graph who can collude with each other. Assuming the "nodes" with the largest influence want to pass it to their heirs, then influence will naturally accumulate within families. The neighbors of max influencers need capacity to support the flow from the max influencers. Therefore the neighbors also have influence, and thus a component of the worldwide social graph becomes a concentrated subsection of wealth. One way for families and their neighbors to protect influence is to form institutions. Literally, to institutionalize their influence. By definition, institutions are founded around a biased component of the social graph. It should be no surprise that they retain their structure across generations. The only way to get a truly "fair" institution would be to seed it with a random subgraph of the entire worldwide population and hope that it could not only survive that heterogenity, but preserve it. We cannot force diversity into institutions like some bandaid solution to inequality. It needs to exist from the moment of creation, or else it never will.

brighteyes 12y ago
> The only way to get a truly "fair" institution would be to seed it with a random subgraph of the entire worldwide population and hope that it could not only survive that heterogenity, but preserve it. You have given in to the worst assumption about humanity, that we are hopelessly and irredeemably tribal. That we will only support our personal clan. And therefore the only way to achieve diversity is to start out diverse; everyone will remain despicably tribal in their loyalties, but at least power will have started out spread around. I think that's a terrible perspective to take on humanity. Yes, we can be tribal. But progress has been incredible. For example, women have come from not being able to vote just a century ago, to being a large majority on college campuses. They did that because humans can appreciate higher principles of fairness and giving people a chance regardless of their personal attributes. > [Diversity] needs to exist from the moment of creation, or else it never will. This is so bleak, and so easily disproven (by lots of fields, including prestigious ones), that it makes me sad even to read it.

multiplicity 12y ago

In other words: "Women, blacks and gays need handouts, because they are incapable of succeeding on their own. I am not a sexist, racist or homophobe despite this." Insanity.

pyrocat 12y ago

I can't express how happy I am that this is the top comment right now.

pervycreeper 12y ago

>idea that there is an institutional bias Out of curiosity, just what kind of evidence would you need in order to falsify this proposition?

chernevik 12y ago

Absolutely. The idea that the pious and self-righteous are more interested in moral superiority than in actually helping any one is deeply hurtful. The pretentious have a right to be taken just as seriously as anyone else.

tsotha 12y ago

>Let's not let the outcome of this specific case affect the idea that there is an institutional bias - conscious or unconscious - against women entering and thriving in male-dominated fields like this one. Where is the actual evidence this is true?

hysterix 12y ago

Wow. Can you step back for half a second and really examine what you're saying? You're saying, these people you are bringing up: women, minorities, etc. are weak, are not strong enough to pick themselves up, and require people to, "do what you can to support these people in your life, in all their endeavours". Can you turn your white guilt off for two seconds and realize maybe these people don't require your saving?