
Hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track - xname
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.long
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nickysielicki
Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'm not ashamed to say that I was a bit
ticked last semester when I came across a girl in one of my classes that had
only taken one CS course, the intro class, and the past summer had interned at
Microsoft. After her freshman year.

As I sat next to her, watching her draw on her free Surface Pro and text on
her free Lumia, I was thinking about the projects I was working on, the
weekends upon weekends I had spent in highschool tinkering around in a shell,
and yeah, it pissed me off. I'm not by any means claiming that women can't
code, that's ridiculous. I've coded with with women that are incredible
thinkers. I just think this is a problem, is all. Meritocracy over everything.

A relevant blog post by weev (and i'll note, here's a trigger warning if you
can't deal with his white victim complex and some name calling):
[http://weev.livejournal.com/409913.html](http://weev.livejournal.com/409913.html)

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Are you upset that you didn't get an internship, and if so have you considered
the possibility that you aren't as good as you think you are.

~~~
nickysielicki
> Are you upset that you didn't get an internship,

No.

> have you considered the possibility that you aren't as good as you think you
> are.

Every day, more than you can imagine.

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cbd1984
So... this isn't sexist?

A non-sexist world would have 1:1, or no preference based on gender, declared
or perceived.

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2510c39011c5
Well, perhaps it depends on the context; if you average that rate over the
whole history of STEM tenure-tracked faculties, males might still be more than
females...

~~~
cbd1984
Still, preference should be 1:1.

The whole point is weeding out sexism. A non-sexist world is 1:1 in terms of
preference.

~~~
2510c39011c5
what are the real benefits and downsides of this sexism (or of the ideal sex-
fairness) for our society, besides the "social justice"?

I mean, if this practice is not beneficial to anyone (except the girls,
[EDIT:and also perhaps the utterly smart guys in the world as the valuation of
this asset for them increases due to this hiring preference]), they probably
would just drop it in the end...

~~~
cbd1984
> what are the real benefits and downsides of this sexism (or of the ideal
> sex-fairness) for our society, besides the "social justice"?

Aside from the obvious, the bias, and people's knowledge of the bias, creates
a perception that women are only there due to an unfair bias in their favor.
This is toxic, and it damages the cause of reducing such biases, because it
brings conversations back to gender equality when they should be about
individual merit.

And that's what this is about: Individuals. Individuals with their own merits
and qualities, not "individuals" as proxies for whatever group they've been
assigned to. Fighting bias is all about making everyone see everyone else as
_just_ an individual, _just_ someone _just like them_ in most respects, not as
some instance of a class to be treated identically to all other instances of
that class.

Going for numerical equality is metric-based thinking, and it relegates
individuals to being instances of a class. It's like saying "Oh, you'll have
so much in common! You're both women, after all!"

(Metric-based thinking: Optimize for what's easy to measure.)

> I mean, if this practice is not beneficial to anyone (except the girls,
> [EDIT:and also perhaps the utterly smart guys in the world as the valuation
> of this asset for them increases due to this hiring preference]), they
> probably would just drop it in the end...

Not if it becomes ingrained, or if it has benefits to the organization which
the leadership thinks outweigh the detriments to the workforce.

~~~
2510c39011c5

      >Aside from the obvious, the bias, and people's knowledge of the bias,
      >creates a perception that women are only there due to an unfair bias
      >in their favor. This is toxic, and it damages the cause of reducing
      >such biases, because it brings conversations back to gender equality
      >when they should be about individual merit.
    

Just to diverge a bit, "bias" itself is not always a bad ass...It has its own
merits such as reducing the decision making cost (just consider all the
Bayesian methods out there, they are all about how to "bias")...

And the process of un-biasing, is also the process of finding new properties
or attributes to bias to (such as the "merits" you mentioned), with more
accurate prediction power...

But back to the question of gender bias, I feel one of the reasons the
industry hiring process starts to favor women than men, is to add more
feminine elements in the product/service they sell, through increasing the
women ratio in their team, and hence to attract more women consumers and also
perhaps the feminine side of straight and gay men.

EDIT: I don't know why the gender bias in the recent tenure-tracked
professorship awarding process in STEM...Is it because the academia would
receive more government or corporate funding if they get more woman
professors? Or perhaps they want to attract more women students to the
department? Or simply they just want to show their political correctness?

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tannk11001
This is great! This is exactly what needs to be happening, and what needs to
get more broadly publicized if we're to see a more representative ratio in
STEM faculty.

It's a long road from here to there, but this is encouraging.

~~~
kurotetsuka
How is this good? Isn't it a clear case of unfair gender discrimination? I get
that people want to correct a perceived injustice, but isn't overcompensating
just as bad?

~~~
tannk11001
It is indeed gender discrimination by definition.

But it's not clear how you distinguish between what's an appropriate
correction to historical discrimination and what's overcompensation. If the
bias were in favor of an over-represented group, it would be more clear -- but
that's not what we're seeing. Women are grossly underrepresented in STEM
faculty, and the only way to correct that is to hire a greater share of them
and to use their gender as a positive discriminating factor in hiring.

I don't believe either of us are in a position to judge whether that should
best manifest as a 2:1 ratio during resume reviews, a 1.1:1 ratio in finalized
hires, or a 5:1 ratio in outreach, or some other arbitrary number during some
other arbitrary phase.

~~~
kurotetsuka
> the only way to correct that is to hire a greater share of them

This is affirmative action, which has the following problem: How do it
eventually end? This is especially true when the desired quota is impossible
(It may or may not be in the case of gender rep in STEM). In the real world,
affirmative action policies never end due to social/political pressure, and
eventually just inflict the converse problem.

Affirmative action is _not_ the only way to correct imbalances (it may not
even do that). The better way, at least in my view, is to correct the cause(s)
of the imbalance, then wait. Of course if there's no discernible correctable
cause, then the imbalance is clearly natural, and should not be disturbed.
This may be slower, but its stable and infallible.

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cjsthompson
Check your priviledge!

