

Recommendation Letters Cost Women Jobs - sitmaster
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-letters-women-jobs.html

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kevinpet
There's a tacit assumption that the discrepancy in emphasis and word choice is
based on gender stereotypes, completely ignoring the possibility that men
actually tend to be more aggressive and women actually tend to be more
communal.

The statement "Subtle gender discrimination continues to be rampant," is
completely unsupported by the evidence.

If we accept the common claim that women are discouraged from being assertive
and behaving in "male" ways, then wouldn't we expect to see an behavioral
difference? If there is a behavioral difference, wouldn't we expect that to be
reflected in letters of recommendation?

This is shoddy science (failure to control for confounding factors) and
implies shoddy social policy (maybe we shouldn't use letters of
recommendation). What makes it worse is that it ignores what would be actual
useful questions like the study that asked people to describe a video taped
baby's behavior with some told the baby was a boy and some told it was a girl.

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mattdw
Of course, you then have to take into account what attributes people value
when hiring, and if (as seems probable) employers prefer the 'agentic'
attributes to the 'communal' ones, then you still have a problem.

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nopassrecover
Your problem is then either a) people should be dishonest when describing
communal people or b) communal people don't have useful skills.

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nopassrecover
Or, you know, women _might_ on average actually be more kind, communal and
tactful hence why their recommendation include these terms...

Men might on average also be more ambitious and outspoken.

This could be attributed to research suggesting women value interpersonal
relationships more than men and that men take greater risks than women (hence
terms like outspoken, assertive and daring).

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woan
I have a good record on recommendation letters for grad school candidates
always centered on stories of how a candidate has an insatiable thirst for the
truth and challenges the status quo to satisfy it. I also make it a point on
how this improves debate and understanding within their team improving on
overall dynamics. Of course this is in the realm of high-tech engineering.

I think that probably does translate to assertive qualities, but in a sense
this is what grad school is about, the search for truth and how a candidate
will improve the experience for their fellow students and the faculty...

The important thing in effective recommendation letters and applications in
general is to know what the evaluators are looking for and speak to it. If
they are looking for communal cultural fit, by all means speak to it, but if
not, it is a wasted opportunity.

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sliverstorm
I think it's telling that I knew subconsciously the instant I saw the
'communal' list that I would never, ever want a colleague or superior to
describe me that way, while I'd be _happy_ to have any of the 'agentic' list
applied to me.

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nopassrecover
Teamplayer sounds a better description than assertive (euphemism for "hard to
get along with")

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sliverstorm
'assertive' may be a euphemism, but 'team player' feels like you're scrounging
and scraping the bottom of the metaphorical bucket. Not that it's a bad trait.

