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“Efforts to combat formerly widespread sexism in hiring appear to have succeeded,” Interesting conclusion.
by efaref 12y ago
“Efforts to combat formerly widespread sexism in hiring appear to have succeeded,”
Interesting conclusion.
- learnstats2 12y agoI gather you are claiming that there is sexism but in the other direction? I disagree, strongly. "female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, yet when they do they are more likely to be hired" These two statements are strongly connected. Women with equivalent qualifications are not applying for the same jobs that men are. I suggest this is because female candidates are self-selecting themselves out of positions they are less suitable for, but equivalent male candidates are applying anyway. As such, male candidates must be selected out by the hiring committee instead (where they will contribute even more to these statistics by applying elsewhere). It's not evident to me that women are being treated equally here, even leaving aside their disadvantage from historical sexist practices.
- okasaki 12y agoNo, the applicants in the study had the same qualifications.
- pervycreeper 12y agoFrom the paper: > In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children). The effect you are proposing, even if true, does not apply to the result in the article.
- learnstats2 12y agoYes, it still applies. If I know that women are typically more realistic in assessing their own skills (including skills outside of qualifications), and given no access to other information or investigation, I should prefer to hire the woman who looks the same on paper. I believe this to be an objective argument based in probability theory.
- pervycreeper 12y agoWhich would be bias. You have merely given a justification for that bias.
- learnstats2 12y agoI understand why you think that but I don't agree. I made a clear argument that there was no bias here - this is a sensible, rational practice on the part of employers. Besides, this is "news" for a reason - nobody would be shocked if the result was in the other direction, because that would be normal and expected in a lot of society. There should be more examples like this, in this direction, because it represents a minimal counterbalance to all the thousands of advantages that men have in STEM/skilled jobs.
- pervycreeper 12y ago>There should be more examples like this, in this direction, because it represents a minimal counterbalance to all the thousands of advantages that men have in STEM/skilled jobs. "Yes, it's bias, but it's for a good cause!"
- rjdagost 12y agoMuch like racism, sexism appears to only go one way in the mainstream media
- pervycreeper 12y agoIt depends what is meant by the word "sexism", which to the public usually means something like "discrimination based on sex", but to those in the know refers to some putative destructive ideology, or even "absence of sufficiently favorable conditions for women". Hence their use of peculiar monikers such as "reverse sexism" to mean discrimination against men, rather than simply "sexism". An illustrative example of this attitude is in the UN's Gender Inequality Index, where, in factors in which women are advantaged (such as lifespan), larger gaps push the figure down rather than up (so larger gaps are considered as more "equal" in those areas that already favor women).