
Blind auditions and gender discrimination - kmod
https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/
======
nickpsecurity
Blind auditions are one technique I push as an alternative to just selecting
people based on their attributes. The authors just shredded one study. Given
size of HN, it's survey time: what are all the good studies you know of it
working, not working, etc?

~~~
AstralStorm
Not sure if shredded. The author detected no significant bias in blind
auditions due to gender. This may or may not mean that blind auditions are
more effective in equalizing opportunities - are fair.

~~~
weberc2
How could it mean that blind auditions are fairer if it didn’t detect a gender
bias signal to begin with? Genuine question?

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dang
Url changed from [https://medium.com/@jsmp/orchestrating-false-beliefs-
about-g...](https://medium.com/@jsmp/orchestrating-false-beliefs-about-gender-
discrimination-a25a48e1d02), which points to this.

~~~
zepto
Why? They are both by the same author but don’t have the same content.

~~~
dang
They mostly overlap and the author references this one from that one. We have
a weak preference for niche sites as compared to platforms like medium.com.
Most importantly, though: threads are incredibly sensitive to initial
conditions.

The current article has a more crisply defined scope. If we start from
something generic like "false beliefs about gender discrimination", an
unsubstantive, angry flamewar is guaranteed. But if we start from something
specific like a well-reported study that turned out to be wrong, there's at
least a chance that the discussion can keep its head. Edit: especially if the
first comments don't chop it off (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21329159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21329159)).

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growlist
Something I'm sceptical about: the idea that introducing people that look
different magically automatically leads to better performing teams.
Questioning this verges on heresy in this day and age, yet there seem to be
plenty of companies that are utterly lacking in (superficial) diversity, yet
(rather inconveniently for diversity cheerleaders) somehow make massive
profits in spite of their handicap.

Another one: women are paid less than men for the same work. If this were the
case, companies would - because they could do an equivalent job to a man for
less money - simply hire all women workforces which due to their lower wage
bill would outcompete and destroy companies that employed men. Yet - again
somewhat inconveniently! - the real world refuses to match the theory.

~~~
RyanCavanaugh
Your second paragraph basically posits that 1950's America would have been
filled with companies hiring minority workers at lower wages to achieve
superior financial results, but this didn't happen to any significant degree.
Was life for African Americans in 1955 one of manifest equality and fairness?

~~~
zamadatix
That's a bit of a strawman, the second paragraph never posited this unless you
really think discrimination against women in 2015 is comparable to
discrimination against blacks in 1955.

What I think the second paragraph fails to talk about is truly rampant
discrimination leads to less opportunity for people to achieve the same
quality/throughput of work as those not discriminated against. If you're in a
group that has been systematically discriminated against it's not really
reasonable to expect that group to have equal representation in an in a high
skill pool they've not generally been allowed in.

Back to talking about the original point made by the comment though: The
conversation and data (usually) isn't "Jane has shown herself to be equally as
valuable as John but nobody will hire her for more than <smaller>% the rate of
John" it's "women are not in the same high paying roles as men in the same
field, by some percentage, why is that" and usually people can agree it's not
that women are naturally <x>% worse performing than men in every way so there
is something discriminatory we are doing wrong as a society still.

------
4ntonius8lock
From the article: > Unfortunately, it is not clear what else the journalists
could be expected to do in this case. After all, they just quoted directly
from some values in a published, peer reviewed study.

I feel this is a bit naive or condescending to journalists.

In many professions you are required to take statistics courses. After all,
they are essential to reading studies.

And reading studies is something professionals should do.

I have only a cursory knowledge of statistics, but enough that if I read the
paper I can pretty easily spot the issues mentioned in the article.

If a news article mentions a study in passing without depth, it could be
forgiven. But writing a whole article on a study based solely on the summary
of the researcher is lazy.

I think the author of the article might be acting naive with the lack of
reporting standards shown by news organizations on this type of articles.

The reality is the study came to an unpopular conclusion. News organizations,
like politicians, won't touch that stuff.

