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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A measure aimed at boosting female employment in the workforce may actually be making it worse, a major study has found.
Leaders of the Australian public service will today be told to "hit pause" on blind recruitment trials, which many believed would increase the number of women in senior positions. Blind recruitment means recruiters cannot tell the gender of candidates because those details are removed from applications. It is seen as an alternative to gender quotas and has also been embraced by Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Victoria Police and Westpac Bank.
In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs. The assumption behind the trial is that management will hire more women when they can only consider the professional merits of candidates. Their choices have been monitored by behavioural economists in the Prime Minister's department — colloquially known as "the nudge unit".
Professor Michael Hiscox, a Harvard academic who oversaw the trial, said he was shocked by the results and has urged caution. "We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist," he said. "We found the opposite, that de-identifying candidates reduced the likelihood of women being selected for the shortlist."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ese002 on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:36PM (9 children)
Gender blind hiring is solution to gender bias against when in hiring.
But, at least in tech*, the assertions are that women dissuaded from entering the field and that those, who do make it in, face a hostile working environment.
Both assertions, if true, work to reduce the number of qualified women who apply for tech jobs. They do not suggest that women are being unfairly filtered out. Thus, there is no reason to expect that gender blind hiring would benefit women. In fact, a third common assertion is that companies almost always want their staff to be more gender balanced but fail to achieve this goal because of a shortage of qualified female applicants.
That the Australian experiment indicates that gender blind hiring works against women is entirely consistent with the those assertions.
Had the experiment gone the other way, that would have a real surprise and a more useful result. It would have suggested a relatively easy to implement solution to a vexing problem.
*It is not clear from the article if these jobs actually were in tech and if the results are in any way relevant to the problem of not enough women in tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:44PM (8 children)
When I was in college pretty much all the women dropped out of the CS program. When I pressed them on it. "I find it boring". They were right, it is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 11 2017, @12:03AM (7 children)
Boring?! Fuck no, it's just tedious at times like all schoolwork and jobs are. And if they put up with the drudgery of it they can dye their hair pink and get really fat and be diversity hires for Google -- and as we all know, Google could use some more diversity. That Google, and other Silicon Valley firms, tout diversity is bullshit. In Google's example it's been around for 19 goddamn years and is still 99% White and Oriental and 1% everything else. Maybe there are more minorities in the bullshit positions like admin and "diversity engineers" and whatnot.
I personally know (well, knew) only one woman who dropped out of her CS program, and that was because she didn't like calculus I. Well boo-fucking hoo, I failed Calc I twice and passed on the third try with an A. I dropped discrete math twice (fuck you, you Serbian cocksucker) and barely squeeked by on the third try with a C. It took me 12 years of school to get a goddamn 4 year CS degree*, but I finally fucking made it. At first I wanted to become a high-school (because fuck getting a Masters) history teacher like a lot of those in my family, but I started to see more and more how teaching became more like babysitting and teachers became increasingly powerless to discipline problem students, teaching to the tests, and living in constant fear of lawsuits and being thrown under the bus by cowardly administrators with no teaching experience. Funny that, because that lady I mentioned earlier became a high school teacher.
* From California Upstairs Strip-Mall University
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @01:04AM
12y fuxk you could have made it to postdoc ... I had mental health issues and it only took me 5y counting a year of "break" working as a simple tech 60hr a week....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @01:50AM (2 children)
I too failed Calc 1 twice, passing on the third try. It wasn't because I couldn't do it -- I just didn't have the motivation to focus on it. But that's the thing, 90% of intelligence is likely motivation. At 18, I was more interested in getting wasted and laid. I sometimes wish I had spent a year between college working in a gas station and partying -- at least you come out of that without student loans and bad marks on your record.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @04:18AM
Essentially yes, but usually we don't refer to it as motivation. It's mostly a matter of persistence and being OK with the uncomfortable feeling of struggling. Calculus isn't trivial, but it is something that virtually anybody can get good at if they're willing to keep at it long enough.
Motivation is the thing that tends to drive persistence.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 11 2017, @03:31PM
You wouldn't believe the number of times I ended up retaking advanced math classes for my CS degree, either. I still maintain they were a large waste of time. And the SE guys had to take even more.
Allegedly our discrete math course, 50% of students failed their first time taking it. I assume only reason anybody took it at all was because it was required for Comp Sci (well, and the math majors, but they're obviously crazy to begin with ;)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 11 2017, @01:55AM
Not often but every now and then I see a post that needs a +11 Insightful.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @12:29PM (1 child)
Erm, asking for a friend .... Are you saying you were a victim of an ethnic chauvinism from prof's side, or was he (or she) just a general asshole^Wcocksucker who also wouldn't let anyone not take note of his (or her) ancestry?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 11 2017, @03:17PM
That professor was one of your classic hardasses. His Ph.D was in advanced discrete math. He taught other upper level maths as well, and his Rate-My-Professor score reflects that. Oh, and he's Eastern European, which means that he learned the real way, not the American snowflake way.
Not that it's a bad thing. But some of us don't have a full time's job's worth of time to work an undergrad class.