
Study: Women Who Can Do Math Still Don’t Get Hired - Anechoic
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/study-women-who-can-do-math-still-dont-get-hired/
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yummyfajitas
I wish we had the actual paper, because the abstract and summary are odd:

 _We studied the effect of such stereotypes in an experimental market, where
subjects were hired to perform an arithmetic task that,_ on average, _both
genders perform equally well._

If this is actually what they did, then it's a bit shady. Most of the data
shows that men and women are the same _on average_ , but men have a higher
_variance_. So if managers are hiring the best, you'll get more men. Of
course, the paper is paywalled, so who knows?

It is nice to know that objective measurements can reduce bias. Score 1 for
hiring by github. I'd be curious to see what happens with incentives taken
into account - make the employees do math problems and the manager gets $1 for
every correct answer.

~~~
anon453456
Here you go:
[https://mega.co.nz/#!6UxzVLIA!BVUOujU76VnhZM45QE4N2oFz0yLRTf...](https://mega.co.nz/#!6UxzVLIA!BVUOujU76VnhZM45QE4N2oFz0yLRTfgO4Mj6GRgT9wU)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Actually this paper is very interesting. So they did in fact reward employers
for employee performance.

What I found the most interesting:

 _If, instead, we were to impose a random choice on employers, their earnings
would drop by 11.4%, because employers do gain some relevant information from
the appearance of the candidates, and this information allows them to make
better-than-random choices (as can be seen in Fig. 1, which shows that
employers in this condition choose the higher-performing candidate 55% of the
time)._

 _If we remove the anti-women bias in expectations [in the case of appearance
only], employers would earn only 0.1% more in compensation._

So it turns out that anti-female bias is almost negligible _when basing
decisions entirely on candidate appearance_. That's really surprising to me. I
wish they included a table describing how much alpha could be gained by
eliminating anti-female bias in all cases.

Also, it looks like the best (and least biased) predictor was Past
Performance. Surprise surprise. Maybe people will now stop complaining about
employers who ask for a github (aka "Past Performance") instead of a resume
("aka "Cheap Talk")?

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yetanotherphd
I'd be interested in seeing a meta-version of this: give two papers with
identical methodologies, one showing that employers tend to hire women less
because they are biased, and one showing that employers tend to hire women
less because the women are less capable.

Then present them to reviewers and see which ones they would accept for
publication.

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femto
I just did an Implicit Association Test, as suggested by the article, and got
a result that was interesting in light of my views of myself.

[http://implicit.harvard.edu/](http://implicit.harvard.edu/)

~~~
girvo
Oh, wow, I highly suggest everyone try this. It really puts your subconscious
bias into stark focus.

~~~
mahyarm
All the tests are highly political topics centered on identity politics &
social justice topics. They also have weird American classifications of
ethnicity being only "Hispanic vs non-hispanic" and "race" which seems more
attached to skin color vs who the person is. I tapped around other countries
and saw that they used some more or less classifiers of ethnicity & 'race' but
the distinction are still there. It makes me put doubts about the testing
itself and how much it would be used to advance political agendas.

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belorn
Reading the abstract, it is interesting that the gender of the manager do not
effect the bias.

I did however not like the idea put forth by the paper that managers should
assume that people lie about their performance. Doing so will only cause
inflation in the lies, in which honest people will lie to balance it up and
dishonest people will lie even further to get an advantage over honest people.

~~~
peteretep

        > I did however not like the idea put forth by the
        > paper that managers should assume that people lie
        > about their performance
    

How about: people are generally poor at objective appraisals of themselves?

~~~
ASneakyFox
my resume is a little on the exageration side. mainly so that when hiring
managers read my resume and assume i'm lying they'll hopefully end up with a
picture of me thats about at the right place.

Also I think that appearing to be better than you really are is a skill that
companies are interested in having on their work force. So being frank and
transparent could possibly work against you, especially if the hiring manager
knows youre being frank and transparent.

~~~
peteretep
I think you are over thinking this. I interview a lot of people for
engineering positions. If I think you're trying to deceive me, or I think
you've lied on your CV, you're getting a much bigger black mark than if you
struggle a bit on the technical tests.

An aside: if you consider a $30,000 wage bracket a senior developer might fall
in to ($80k-$110k), I see little correlation between what people ask for and
what they 'deserve' based on their technical skills (inside of that bracket)

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petermonsson
This is a shame. My anecdotic experience is that 9 out of 10 female engineers
are solid, productive members of society and 1 out of 10 is marginal. The male
side is much worse. Yes there is 1 out of 10 who is really good, but 2 out of
10 are not worth their paycheck at all, 1 is marginal and 6 out of 10 are
solid productive members of society.

~~~
gernb
My experience is the opposite of yours (I wish it wasn't so). I've haven't
worked with that many female engineers in 28 years as an engineer. There's
been maybe 12 total as there are so few.

Of those 12 only 2 would I personally hire. That's under 20%. On the male
side, depending on the company, it's between 95% at good companies and 50% at
bad. In other words, 80% of the women I've worked with didn't seem like a peer
(as in able to keep up) whereas less than 50% of the men couldn't keep up. In
both camps, men and women, there were plenty of people I liked as people and
would be happy to have as friends but I wouldn't hire them to work with.

I know that's just an anecdote

Maybe we're saying different things though. You're claiming in your experience
9 of 10 female engineers are productive members of society. I'm claiming in
mine 10 of 12 female engineers are not productive engineers. They may be
productive members of society but at work I need productive engineers.

It would really be nice if there was an objective way to measure and or fix
this. I'd really like engineering more if there were more women and every time
I interview a woman for a job position I hope she's going to pass but even
that has been poor. Then again, so few women interview that I don't know what
the hit vs miss ratio is there vs men. I'd say it's 1 of 6 or men at best. So
far it's 1 of 5 for women meaning I've only interview 5 women since we get so
few female applicants.

~~~
magicalist
> _I know that 's just an anecdote_

that's not just an anecdote, that's a disastrous sampling scheme.

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rachellaw
It's not just math, you can put any traditionally male-dominated field in and
it'll still work i.e. Study: Women Who Can Code Still Don't Get Hired; Study:
Women Who Write Games Still Don't Get Hired etc etc

~~~
facepalm
Who is hiring game developers?

~~~
rachellaw
In New York, there's a relatively large indie game scene. They hire game
developers, but usually for casual games i.e. iOS app games (think flappy
bird) or indie games

------
altero
Study: 90% deaths at workplace are men.

Study: most victims of violent rapes are men (prison)

Study: college hostile towards men, most graduates are woman.

~~~
Dewie
> Study: most victims of violent rapes are men (prison)

But that's just funny! "Don't drop the soap!" haha...

~~~
altero
What is funny about that? 20% of rape victims are totally ignored.

~~~
Dewie
sarcasm

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NextUserName
Edit: if you want to down-vote this, go ahead, but please tell me which one of
the facts I have written is incorrect. I also welcome opposing viewpoints with
explanations. I am merely providing some of the reasons that men are hired
above women. This does not necessarily represent my personal viewpoints, I am
playing devils advocate in some cases here.

> _The economist Larry Summers famously suggested once that so few women
> become scientists and engineers because of discrimination, preference and
> even differences in innate ability._

Ability? There are many teenage prodigies who become homeless and total
failures in life. Who ever thought that ability alone guarantees anything?
This is a flawed and narrow minded mentality.

Does anyone ever stop and think that there may be more logical reasons than
ability that men are hired above women?

There are probably thousands of reasons that men get hired in front of women.
Here are some (many of which are not politically correct) facts. As derived by
science, statistics, and surveys. I am only echoing information based on
research and experience (as a HR specialist for 15 years). These are
generalities and certainly don't apply to all women and all men.

Women are generally less ambitious (even if they had better grades). Less
creative problem solvers, and less logical (more emotional) with their
decisions. Most of them lack the strong drive that men have for career
advancement and success. Many men relentlessly work toward advancement and
achievement despite having to make sacrifices such as family time, and other
obstacles. Much of this is because of the role of testosterone and the design
of the male brain (for competition and dominance). I am not saying that there
are no women who are ambitions. I am just saying that the ratio is highly in
favor of men here. I mentioned the testosterone part because many of you will
respond that it is only that women have not been given the proper chance and
thus the difference. This has been dis-proven by science and statistical
studies.

Most women at some point get pregnant and have kids. This (moderately to
severely depending on the person) affects their productivity and mood while
pregnant (9 months). Afterward they are off work for 4-6 months (or
potentially much longer if the newborn has health problems). The women cannot
be legally replaced during this time. Her job has to be waiting there for her
when (and if) she eventually comes back. When she does come back, women miss
far more work than men to take care of sick kids. This all puts a company in a
difficult position (financially and otherwise) that does not exist for men.

Women miss work more often than men because of personal illness and
depression.

Women are far less amenable to overtime and don't perform well in crunch
situations. They do not cope with stress as well as men, and emotionally
degrade with fatigue at a far faster rate than males. When distressed, they
become irritable, combative and irrational more often than men when in high
stress situations (their emotions escalate more quickly).

Women's hormones fluctuate at a far higher rate and frequency, often affecting
their moods, concentration, and productivity. Estrogen causes emotional
instability and fluctuation. Men have little estrogen and don't experience the
peaks and valleys that women do. Women are more likely to form clicks and
ostracize, other women among other social problems. Women just don't get along
with women quite often. It causes a real distraction for everyone and hurts
workplace morale.

Women (attractive ones) are a distraction to many men. I am generally not
blaming women for this, but it is a fact. Men will spend time talking to a
pretty female employee just because. Workplace relationship that may form are
often disastrous. When the relationship ends, a real mess ensues.

Men can and do occasionally (some men more than occasionally) talk dirty when
women aren't around. You have a women around and men have to watch everything
they say. They can't say t__s or b__bs out loud. That could land them in the
unemployment line because of a sexual harassment complaint.

Men have been in charge since the beginning of time. They have leadership
built into their DNA. They see women as trying to encroach on that and being
the competitors that they are - don't want extra competition. This is natural.

Political correctness and "equality". Wither you are are for or against them,
are not natural, logical or intuitive. Men thinking that men should be
selected above women in tech/science because as a whole, they posses more
natural skills and posses less natural challenges is logically the best bet.
There are instances where a women will outperform a man, but statistically the
odds are against this happening by a large scale.

Edit: here are a couple more statistics: Women are more likely to quit a job.
Women are more likely to exit the workforce altogether.

There are a number of books rationalizing gender based wage and hiring
inequality that point out far more statistics and logical (cause and effect)
reasoning than I have mentioned here. I will try to dig up a couple.

~~~
onion2k
With the exception of pregnancy, most of the points you raise are symptoms of
inequality rather than causes:

\- Women are "less ambitious" because they perceive, often rightly, that their
path up the ladder is blocked.

\- Women miss more work due to illness and depression because they aren't
treated fairly and are put under more pressure to get the rewards their male
counterparts get easily.

\- Women are less amenable to overtime because men are less amenable to doing
housework.

\- Women can, and do, cope with "hormone fluctuation" very well. They're quite
used to it.

\- Attractive women in the workplace are only a distraction to unprofessional,
easily distracted men.

Your two final points are plain wrong:

\- Men talking dirty in the workplace just shouldn't. Regardless of the
(imaginary) sensibilities of women, what about the men who don't like that?

\- Men haven't been in charge since the beginning of time. History has had
plenty of matriarchal societies.

The simple fact is, any business that doesn't select the best possible
candidate _regardless of gender_ , is failing their duty to their
shareholders/investors/employees to build a secure, stable, profitable and
growing company. If I knew that a company I owned part of was recruiting men
over women even when the woman is the better candidate I would call for the
CEO to be fired.

~~~
NamTaf
Thank you for posting this. I'd just like to also add that the "best possible
candidate regardless of gender" clause does not run orthogonal to having ratio
targets.

Firstly, they act to overcome the biases mentioned in the OP. Secondly, rarely
do employees operate in a vacuum, and the benefits brought to teamwork by
having mixed genders is important and valuable. The office I work in is
infinitely richer for having moved towards having more equal (albeit still
terribly inequal) gender balance by recruiting female Engineers. This shines
through in group work where a diverse range of perspectives is important at
achieving a robust outcome, e.g.: risk assessments, etc.

