
Blind recruitment trial to boost gender equality making things worse - flukus
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888
======
spangry
I'm glad to see some empirical testing of assertions about unconscious gender
bias. I think people fall into a bit of a trap when they see the high-level
statistics: they assume all other factors are equal and therefore the
disparity is entirely due to gender discrimination. While this may indeed be
an issue, there are a multitude of other factors at play. Even people who
really ought to know better oversimplify this issue.

For example, at my workplace (a government department with a strong focus on
economics) there's a big push on at the moment for promoting women. The reason
for this is that women are severely under-represented (relative to the male-
female population ratio) in the senior ranks. No one seems to have considered
that, given the senior executive in the public service tend to be older, the
main driver is probably the fact that enrolment in university economics
courses was heavily male dominated when that age-cohort was attending
university (if memory serves, the ratio was something like 80-20).

So the issue in my workplace isn't so much that there is discrimination
against women, but rather that there is discrimination against people who
haven't studied economics (and rightly so, given the department's function). I
haven't checked the most recent census, but the one before that showed
university economics enrolments was still around 60-40 male-female.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not suggesting gender discrimination
does not exist. I just wish people would think a bit more carefully about this
issue if they must insist on having such strong and vocal opinions about it.

------
ableton
This is a great article. I remember when that lady recently accused Tesla of
gender discrimination and tesla basically said that they had already given her
special treatment because she was a lady.

Women and men are very different. Diversity means accepting the good that
those differences bring, not trying to eliminate it by making men and women
the same.

