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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @04:33AM
These "experts" have assumed their own conclusion that the reason for a lack of diversity in natural society is prejudice and bias, rather than merit. Literally every single piece of evidence we gather that can used to test their conclusion shows the exact opposite. Note the critique of the experiment only comes after 'disappointing' results.
In a way we might even look towards our deteriorating system of education for the cause of this [seeking to oppose reality.] In the world of publish or perish, having an unobtainable goal is a very good thing when you can solicit publication and funding in pursuit of that goal. With companies, governments, and journals all actively engage in supporting diversification research - it's a topic that can certainly sustain vastly more careers than nearly any other topic with minimal expertise required on part of those that profit from it. And of course this is nothing new. Let us not forget the Sokal Affair. [wikipedia.org]