The article states that they get more male applicants than female, but then it also states, "Women know where the women are" and that they have a relatively equal ratio of male/female employees.
So basically, they "solved" Silicon Valley's "Woman Problem" by turning away a large number of qualified male applicants and hired from the smaller pool of females.
Sounds like gender discrimination to me.
A truly non discriminatory workplace would have a ratio of male/female employees that was in line with the ratio of qualified male/female applicants (even if that meant more males than females). Just saying.
I think you are getting to the core of the disagreement here. You can have a process that either ensures equal treatment or ensures equal outcomes (for certain groups), but you cannot guarantee both. The only way to guarantee both is for all groups of interest to be emotionally, intellectually, and preferentially identical.
Essentially, you can view any (HR or other) process as a function, and you can either guarantee a 'fair' function, or a 'fair' result, but not both unless you restrict the inputs.
Some people prefer to have equality of treatment, while others prefer equality of outcome; I think this is why people disagree so vehemently on this issue, and rarely change their minds or compromise after a debate.
Good way of putting it. I think most people would prefer equality of both treatment and outcome, if possible.
Additionally, I suspect that it is possible, just not in the short term (or even decades, possibly). But in the long term, I think that if you achieve equality of outcome, then new norms begin to take root, and eventually, you can remove any artificially created inequality of treatment and still get an equal outcome.
Your function example really nails it down if you consider it cyclical, with the output being averaged with previous inputs and then re-entered as input.
So, inequal input to an equal function generates inequal output. But if you change the function to be inequal but opposite to the existing input, then your output becomes equal. When you average it, it becomes inequal again, but less so than the original. Once your average approached equal by repeating this, you can replace your inequal function with an equal one and your system should remain fairly stable. Essentially, your function just needs to compensate for biased input, and if there is no biased input, it can behave equally.
However, simply having equal treatment/function with inequal outcomes/input/output results in a system that just remains the same.
So basically, affirmative action type steps could potentially lead to an environment where those steps are no longer necessary, and can be removed, achieving actual equality.
I don't know if you're an idealist, but you seem to believe that there is strong feedback in the function, which is something that I am somewhat skeptical of.
If income and examples/role models were the primary inputs, I'd have to agree that your feedback model would work. The problem is that there seem to be fundamental differences between many groups in IQ, EQ, and preferences. In addition, men and women have different life experiences beyond how society treats them, as men cannot experience what it is to carry a child to term, and men are less likely to breastfeed their children; if this type of experience is a relevant input to work productivity or preferences, a 'fair' system will probably create unequal outcomes.
Perhaps there are some factors that would lead to unequal outcomes that would not be corrected, but I expect that these, including the ones you describe, would have significantly smaller effects than what we currently have. And I expect that those would have been the initial impetus causing a runaway feedback effect which would cause what we have.
So, really we have two functions. One function produces the number of men and women applying for the jobs. The second function produces the number of men and women occupying the jobs. The second function is the one we've discussed wanting to control to be either fair or unfair. And yes, with inequal inputs, a fair function produces inequal outputs.
The first function, we are assuming for now is beyond our control, and the inputs to it are largely unknown and/or beyond our direct control. It is a product of experiences, societal norms, encouragement, discouragement, and personal interests. The first function directly generates the inputs to the second function. As I understand it, you are postulating that this first function is inherently inequal to the point of generating the current applicant proportions we are seeing, and that the output of this function is not significantly impacted by any inputs that are the output of the second function (feedback effect). I would argue that the first function, while possibly inequal, is not sufficiently so to create what we observe, and instead, is reasonably impacted by the output of the second function. Thus, the feedback effect.
Anecdotes I've read and witnessed seem to indicate that there are factors that reduce the number of females who make it to the application stage that would not exist if females were not already a minority in the workforce. Males in an all-male team do frequently develop habits that would put off most women who join that team as a newcomer. This doesn't have to be intentionally malicious to discourage a woman from continuing to work in the field. If women are made to feel uncomfortable, intentionally or otherwise, they are less likely to stay and to encourage other women to join, and more likely to actively discourage more women to join. And it seems very likely that a 50% female workforce would go a long way to removing uncomfortable work environments. And this can happen similarly at the college level before ever getting to real work environments, with women facing friction in mostly male programs.
Then there's the conception that it is a typically male job, just because there are many more man than women currently in it. This isn't malicious either, necessarily, it's just the way human minds work. You see mostly men doing something, you associate it with men. So you get a stronger unconscious gender affinity just because that's the way it is and has been. And that affinity leads fewer women to try the field out, fewer people to encourage them to try it out, and more people to encourage them toward other fields or even some people actively discouraging them, possibly those who have previously dropped out of the field or possibly just naive types.
I'm sure there are other examples of ways that an existing imbalance in the workforce impact the balance of those attempting to join the workforce and making it all the way to the application phase.
Also note. I'm not making any claims as to exactly how strong this feedback loop is. Just that it is strong enough to make a significant difference over a significant amount of time. That time frame may be decades, or it may be generations. I expect that at a minimum, we'd see a far greater natural equality if it were artificially enforced for 50 years or so. After that, you could have a system that is almost entirely fair, perhaps occasionally adding a small balance to restore it any time it approaches a significant tipping point again.
My personal view is that the case you are putting forward is quite tenuous, and does not justify unequal treatment. Making a "significant difference over a significant period of time" is simply too speculative to justify discrimination, especially when the "significant difference" wouldn't necessarily increase people's happiness, productivity, or life satisfaction; one could imagine that making men and women more similar might make both groups worse off. In addition, it seems that most groups' positions and roles seem to be evolving (I assume mostly in their favor), and I have no reason to believe that spontaneous evolution is any 'worse' than affirmative action, especially in long term results.
To make your case convincing to me, you would need a clear outline of how the plan would create a Pareto improvement (which would not necessarily be pecuniary), and you would also need to outline a way of determining whether the plan is working. In my view, there is a danger of executing a plan which has no chance of working, and continuing to rachet-up the discrimination in the vain hope that 'it might work if we try harder'. I would also require your plan to have a much better expected outcome than the status quo.
Perhaps there is also an alternative argument which would convince me that procedural discrimination was 'worth it', but I haven't heard it yet.
Well, money doesn't buy happiness, but it does go a pretty long way toward facilitating it. So I'd say it's unlikely that the status quo of leaving a huge imbalance in some of the most lucrative fields available today wouldn't be worse for women than addressing that imbalance. I can't think of any high paying fields that are dominated by women. And there is a notable difference in average pay between men and women.
I'd agree with your second paragraph, for the most part. It is easy for a program with the right intentions to fall into that trap. It would bear a more in-depth analysis. I think, once started, it would be fairly easy to determine if it is working. If a more equal workforce can't be maintained without an increase in efforts, it probably isn't working. In fact, a sign of it working would be a gradual decrease in the need for it. In other words, if the workforce began to skew the other way, then the program would need to be scaled back to bring things back in line. So, if it worked, it would be self-terminating, and should be designed as such.
>Some people prefer to have equality of treatment, while others prefer equality of outcome; I think this is why people disagree so vehemently.
Yes, because those who prefer equality of outcome are wrong, and they see no problem with discrimination against me when it comes to education and employment. In order to bring about equality of outcome along gender or racial lines you would also have to create separate job markets along those same lines. Instead of competing against everyone for a position I would only be competing against white males. At some point in our history it was decided that separate is by definition not equal.
1. Your job application probably has language that discourage women from applying [1].
2. Men tend to apply for jobs even though they don't meet all of the qualifications, whereas women tend not to [2].
So there's bias introduced before you even see the list of applicants, and given no other information, it would not be that surprising to find a randomly selected woman from that candidate pool would be more qualified than a randomly selected man.
While that may be true, out right discrimination by turning away qualified male applicants is not how to correct a bias in applicant hiring, it would be extremely hypocritical to suggest that is some how okay. Give people tools to find the best candidates and they will use them, the market for tech talent is extremely competitive.
why would you select any candidate at random, though ? When sifting through candidate pools, (i.e. stack of resumes), isn't it a given that we should only call the best-qualified candidates ?
You leave out the possibility that the smaller pool of female applicants happened to have more of the highest quality applicants. That could potentially be explained by more quality filters being in place on women before ever reaching the application stage. What those filters might be isn't really important, but I could come up with several possibilities. They would be pure guesses, of course.
Edited to add: This effect of course would decrease greatly as you scale up. For instance, imagine there are 700 men and 300 women looking for jobs in your area, and women have been pre-filtered somehow such that they skew to high quality significantly more than men. You can hire the best 50 people and end up with more women than men, but by the time you are hiring the top 600 people, you're going to have more men than women. So, this works for a smaller operation better than a larger one, at least for creating an observable result. That said, perhaps changing the hiring practices of many larger companies would have an eventual secondary impact on these mysterious filters.
The problem is that it sounds like one of the factors they are using to determine whether or not someone is "qualified" is whether they are a female.
The article clearly states:
"It starts with the hiring process. Applestone doesn’t just pick through the applicant pool that comes to her; she goes out and actively looks for qualified women."
So she is ignoring the male applicants and is actively looking for women instead. That's pretty much the definition of gender discrimination.
Of course, it doesn't say that anyone is being ignored. It sounds instead like a type of Rooney Rule [1], where all applicants are considered, and under-represented candidates are explicitly included.
I suppose that if the goal is to hire solely based on qualifications (and what salaries people are willing to work for, but that might be part of "qualifications"?), and qualifications (and prices) are equally distributed among genders among applicants, that the number of persons hired of each gender would be roughly proportional to the number of applicants of each gender.
(Wow that sentence that I just wrote sure was a run-on sentence. I hope it isn't too too badly worded.)
One might consider other motivations.
Is it possible that the proportion of applicants of each gender is influenced by the proportion of persons of each gender of those who are employed in the industry in question? (E.g. maybe persons are less likely to apply for a job if they know that their gender is in the minority in either the industry in general, or in the specific company? I don't claim that this is the case, but it does not seem fundamentally absurd.)
If this does turn out to be the case, there might be a positive feedback loop on the difference in ratios of genders, causing a small initial disparity to have a tendency to get larger over time.
Would this be a problem?
I don't know. It could be fine I guess.
It also seems plausible that this could cause some disadvantages as well. I don't know that any would be significant.
So, uh, it seems like the question is:
Is there an /unfortunate/ cause for significantly unequal proportions of genders in applicants for an industry, and if there is, and if changing hiring practices could "counteract" that in some way, should they prioritize , I guess you could call it fairness to the individual, or should they prioritize addressing some sense of "fairness" to groups as a whole?
I think this is a difficult question?
One question might be whether there is an obligation to do either. (Note: I do not mean a legal obligation.) If someone wants to hire only, say, left handed people, or only men on odd days of the month and only women on even days of the month, or only people who went to the same college as them, is there a reason they shouldn't do that?
Maybe. It seems reasonable to me that both of the options I mentioned regarding gender would be better (in the current climate) than , for example, having a policy of only hiring males, even if it is ok to have a policy of only hiring males. (I also don't know why one would have such a policy, and I think that such a policy would likely be wrong, but if it isn't wrong, I still think the other two things mentioned would both be better than it.)
That whole 'mosquito' thing is very odd. From reading it seems that this was a sexist remark and women everywhere have had to deal with similar comments when in actual fact it's nothing to do with her being a woman, moreso the fact that in her role, she was a tiny bit annoying. Anyone in that role, man or woman, would've had a similar 'nickname' just from the nature of the role itself
It's possible it's a reference to her voice. But not having met her, I don't know. It's also possible, that were she a big burly guy they might not have treated her the same way.
Either way, it sounds like the place handled it appropriately, which is awesome.
> It's also possible, that were she a big burly guy they might not have treated her the same way.
Sure, but he may have just been referred to as a meat head, a dumb lug, etc.
Also, the lady was in charge of enforcing safety rules. People almost always hate that person, even if they are saving their asses. See how OSHA reps are treated on job sites as an example.
Is that really a gender issue, or is it a threatening-demeanor issue ? What if she were a vociferous, large black woman who had an aggressive, threatening personality ? Still a woman, but at least as big of a "perceived threat" as a "big, burly guy".
What if she were a rail-thin effeminate homosexual male ? Lower perceived "threat level", perhaps would have earned her the same nickname ?
one of the many issues that makes this gender-division thing murky is that a lot of the time, but not always, men are physically larger and more aggressive. I suspect that more testosterone generally yields higher aggressiveness (and I've experienced this first-hand after weight lifting at the gym and generally feeling more aggressive ). My point is, its human nature to defer to a more aggressive human, and while gender typically has some correlation, it could be the aggressiveness (not always the gender) responsible for womens' collective withdrawal from the field.
"It’s also no accident; a commitment to gender diversity is at the core of the company’s DNA."
Some people make the tech industry gender imbalance out to be primarily driven by sexism/misogyny, when I think this article makes clear it's more about chauvinism and bias. If everything goes well, in the future we will have a balance of gender in the tech industry. But we will still be left with elephants in the room.
People associate with, and hire, people like themselves. That extends to gender, race, economic status, education, sexual preference, religion, etc. The fact that this company has zero black employees is probably not because they're racists - it's more likely due to personal bias, which drives both hiring and corporate culture.
I don't think this company has solved a problem. They're hiring based on bias just like all the white male-led tech companies. They just have a slightly different angle. (Or at least, that's what I get from the article, which may have been written with a very specific spin)
>If everything goes well, in the future we will have a balance of gender in the tech industry.
Why are you so sure of this? What if the natural balance is 80% male? There are many industries where this is the case. Even if businesses become increasingly discriminatory against male applicants, it isn't going to change that those who spend time learning the requisite skills are more likely to be men.
First off, there is no natural balance to an industry, because they aren't natural. They do have norms, though.
Second, saying tech businesses are going to become 'increasingly discriminatory' against men is like saying that after desegregation and the civil rights movement we got 'increasingly discriminatory' against white people sitting in the front of a bus.
Third, there's no scientific/factual basis for why men might spend more time learning tech skills. It's not like 80% of men around the world sit around all day thinking about debugging kernel drivers. More than likely it's social conditioning and gender stereotypes that lead to the impression that men are simply more interested in, or better at, technology-related skills.
If you don't believe in gender stereotype, imagine if your mother taught your sister how to work on the family car, and told you to go back inside and play with your tea set because your pretty clothes might get dirty, and that this happened when your brain was still forming a very early world view.
Replace natural balance with equilibrium if the term natural makes you uncomfortable. My point is that there are innate differences between men and women, and these are reflected in their preferences for different types of work. There is a reason there are more women than men in nursing, that there are more male plumbers than female, and wishing for a different reality doesn't make it so.
>Second, saying tech businesses are going to become 'increasingly discriminatory' against men is like saying that after desegregation and the civil rights movement we got 'increasingly discriminatory' against white people sitting in the front of a bus.
The difference between my example and yours is that nobody is preventing women or minorities from applying or working in the desired positions. Nobody has legislated away their rights. The position you're advocating is quite similar to segregation. White men are only allowed on the "bus" after the front fills up with women.
There are many evolutionary reasons why men might spend more time building tools. I've noticed that it is politically acceptable to say that women make better caretakers or that they are more sociable, but that it is no longer politically acceptable to do the same with positive traits in regards to men.
To address your last point - "In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University and Melissa Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44 female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys’ preference for each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did not differ in their preference for the neutral toys."
Wishing for a different reality doesn't make it so.
>What if the natural balance is 80% male? There are many industries where this is the case.
All genders, races, nationalities, and other protected classes having the same innate skills for white-collar jobs is solidly the null hypothesis. Let's see some extraordinary evidence for the alternative before abandoning it as our working assumption.
Preference plays a role. Also, there is evidence that preferences differ between the genders and are not entirely due to social, political, or cultural reasons.
The argument holds true for innate preferences as well. It's one thing to argue that some preferences are innate in men versus women, another thing to prove that these preferences would cause women or men to avoid tech more than their counterpart on average in a vacuum, and a particularly extraordinary thing to prove that the "optimal equilibrium of gender" in tech is significantly different than 50/50 because of both of the above.
It would be difficult to prove any "optimal equilibrium of gender" even one of 50/50. Of course, those who strive for equality of opportunity aren't trying to institutionally force their optimal equilibrium of gender on anyone else. We accept that preferences play a role as to who ends up working in a particular sector, and those preferences may differ from our ideal.
This is not a company where micro-aggressions will fly.
This seems like such a toxic philosophy to me. One of the worst things you can do for a workplace is stifle honest conversation and criticism, and this focus on not "micro-aggressing" will do just that - the way it has in colleges over the last few years.
Microaggression is, by definition, to casually denigrate others by repeating or affirming stereotypes for the purpose of discounting contributions or establishing the dominate class as normal and the minority class as aberrant or pathological.
It is the exact opposite of honest conversation and criticism.
Some examples would be dismissing a woman's analysis because "women are bad at math". Turning to the one female colleague in the room and telling her to go get some coffee. Suggesting that a minority is unqualified and a diversity hire. Labeling LGBT coworkers as psychologically unsound. Telling a woman she must not take her career seriously if she is pregnant.
Having a policy against toxic environments is not, itself, toxic. Even if it makes some men who hold the above opinions feel "on guard". Because they should feel on guard about not spouting such vitriol.
In theory. In practice lots of things can be seen more than one way.
You can ask the women to go fetch coffee because she is closests to the door, because it is her turn or because she is a woman.
In practice it means you never ask the women to get coffee, even when she is sitting closest to the door and you would have asked a man in the same situation.
And the trouble isn't that you have to actually shut up about racists shit, the trouble is you constantly have to ask yourself "could this statement be read the wrong way" - it is like posting everything you do on tumblr, where the term originated.
Yes, but these things don't occur in a vacuum. For example, the word 'boy' was used demean african american males by whites for much of our history. Now even if they are, in fact, a young male using that word in reference to an african male is about as offensive as it can get.
It may be unfortunate that because men oppressed women for so long that there are certain conventions that have taken on offensive connotations. But I assure you, the inconvenience of getting your own coffee is nothing compared to the experiencing the history leading to that act taking on a negative implication.
I've never worked in an office where people took turns fetching coffee for each other as a matter of routine though I'm sure some do. I seriously doubt there's a wave of women refusing to take a turn in such an ordered affair. I personally know and seen of many, many women who've been told to fetch coffee for a room full of equals that are men.
> the trouble is you constantly have to ask yourself "could this statement be read the wrong way"
It's only really a trouble if you're in the habit of being casually offensive. If you're not, it's just a small check no different than when in a group being generally polite and respectful.
Ultimately, in my experience those who are most bothered and vocal in their complaints about being considerate tend to also be those that are most likely to do offensive things like objectifying women, making racially offensive remarks, etc.
> it is like posting everything you do on tumblr, where the term originated.
This is incorrect. Microaggression is a theory developed at Harvard in the 1970's by psychiatrist Chester Pierce. [1]
none of those is micro. Those are egregious acts of sexism and discrimination in my book.
To me, a micro aggression would be very nuanced stereotypes and bigotry ( "let's have Wong do it, Chinese guys are great at math" ), or a condescending "let me know if you need help" from a male to female when she clearly already knows how to do it. Saying "I'll take it, this one's a man's job".
> Telling a woman she must not take her career seriously if she is pregnant.
I'm for equality, and the area around FMLA is not equal, by any means.
That issue is caused by the risk that women of child-bearing age have with regards to our laws on FMLA. Women (of child bearing age) are an inherent risk with strong legal ramifications if ignored. Once pregnant, they can effectively get up and leave their position. Depending what they were doing, can cause significant team problems. And the employer is required to provide their or a similar position back when they return. I'm sure the actuaries have calculated that risk appropriately.
To fix that, all gov't needs to do is apply FMLA to all parties in a relationship when one in it is pregnant. Then the actuarial cost equals itself out. Equality is approached.
You won't hear any dissent from me when it comes to improving our lack luster family leave support.
However, telling a woman she doesn't take her career seriously is a different matter. You cannot assume to know that woman's situation, her commitment to her job, her resources for child care, etc. She may have a stay at home husband. She could have a full time nanny. Her commitment, as an individual, may be no more or less than any of her coworkers.
Further, U.S. law (as abysmal as it is) on family leave is egalitarian. Both men and women may take up to 12 weeks leave in a 12 month period after the birth. Two states, including CA, extend 6 weeks of subsidized pay to both men and women. Most companies extend the same "bonding period" allowance to both men and women (generally taken out of their base vacation).
The only exception I've seen that women get aside from men is an extra couple of weeks if they have a cesarean. But again, this is entirely up to the private company issuing the benefits. The state is equal in the benefits it allots.
Thus, dismissing a woman through this verbalization is more about stereotyping than any reality with regard to disparity in benefits. And the perceived risk is as much about cultural and corporate biases on care taking. Which is why it is a microagression.
> However, telling a woman she doesn't take her career seriously is a different matter. You cannot assume to know that woman's situation, her commitment to her job, her resources for child care, etc. She may have a stay at home husband. She could have a full time nanny. Her commitment, as an individual, may be no more or less than any of her coworkers.
I've never seen someone be that crass. Live and learn, I guess.
I was referring to managers and business people making choices with these actuarial decisions in mind. Of course they aren't going to say "you there is a woman, you sure serious about working?"... Instead, they're going to be paid lower wages and passed up on promotions. My justification is that this is the cost of the risk associated related to the FMLA.
Is no way to have proper communication. And that's the point with branding things as "micro-aggressions". Its an effective social construct to silence someone by branding them as discriminatory. Usually, without proof.
> This is not a company where micro-aggressions will fly. This is a company where the first bedrock rule is that nobody gets interrupted, and the second is that everyone gets their say.
If you take the whole quote from the article, it doesn't seem like it would stifle honest conversation at all, if anything micro-aggressions would reduce open communication by making people believe their input is valid or wont be heard.
I think you will agree a tyrannical workplace that stifles honest conversation and criticism is a pretty shitty place to work, and perpetuates the unhealthy power imbalance between employers and employees. A workplace shouldn't be a kingdom of the CEO where his word is law, at least not as it applies to your everyday behavior and speech. Exceptions of course to expecting widely accepted professional behavior.
No, I don't agree. Nobody should feel uncomfortable in their workplace, especially if the reason for discomfort has nothing to do with work. Comments about gender, sexual orientation, and race are almost never appropriate. College is a very different environment because people go there to learn holistically.
I poorly worded the parent comment. I agree with everything you said. It's when you take "nobody should feel uncomfortable in their workplace" to the absolute extremes that things become difficult, which is what a discussion about "micro-aggressions" becomes. At what point does someone's uncomfortableness with something become invalid? It's obviously not limitless.
No, but most companies filter out the most unreasonable people in their hiring process. I think you're making a caricature of these people's attempts to support their coworkers. "Microaggressions" in this context means that you should be careful about the little things you say, because you're in a multicultural workplace.
Startups are more like colleges than businesses. You drink a lot of beer, play ping pong, get no sleep, and after 4 years you're broke and moving back in with your parents.
No, most businesses will not in fact benefit from a venting of the open and honest feelings of people who strongly believe in prejudices against races, genders, religions, ages, ethnicities, and the like.
To be fair, I specified "civil." The thread started by referencing "micro aggressions," so I don't think strong beliefs in prejudices really apply here. I agree that most spaces (college or business) should be free of most types of aggression, but it seems to me that there is a subset of people who perceive aggression (or even go looking for it) when it is not in fact there. There is a cost to being too careful in what you say just as there is a cost in not being careful enough.
You know, now that I've had a chance to think about it, the fact that you would interpret what I wrote as in any way condoning racist or sexist behaviour is exactly the sort of reaction I was talking about.
He's saying politics has no place at work. you're there to make money, producing a quality product or service. Not to meditate on your philosophy of 21st century feminism.
In which case, you have also clearly missed what I was trying to communicate. Maybe, we both suck at English. I said nothing about politics or any other inappropriate workplace chatter. I was trying to say that an environment where you become paranoid about saying anything for risk of offending is not a healthy one. Does this particular company get to that point? Probably not, but too much focus on whether or not something is a "micro aggression" could bring it there rapidly.
I actually agree with most of what you said; I just don't see how it is relevant in the context of the point I was trying to make.
Nobody is advocating for that kind of environment! The reason "micro-aggressions" need a name is because white dudes freak the fuck out when they got told that people are unhappy about their supposedly benign comments about people's appearance or background. The only thing any company I know of is asking is that people stop making these comments when made aware that they're bothering people.
I tried to leave it, but I find that I can't . . .
It may be that no one is actively advocating for such an environment. Nevertheless, that is the direction that I see things trending. The road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that. I have participated in the mandatory all-staff harassment training with several employers. What I took away from it each and every time is that a person can be fired for literally anything if someone else (mis)construes his/her actions/remarks as offensive. There was never a requirement that the "offender" be warned or told to stop. In at least one jurisdiction, it did not even have to be a coworker or in a work situation. Literally, anyone on the planet could complain about you to your employer, and your employer would likely be forced to fire you. Thankfully, most people are reasonable and I have no personal knowledge of any miscarriages of justice due to these policies. My workplaces for the most part have been open and honest and respectful. However, I have encountered enough unreasonable people, read enough media reports, have enough second-hand knowledge of incidents to be nervous about the prospect of a mere allegation ruining someone's reputation, career, or even their whole life. It does have a chilling effect. In principle, I am very much in favour of "zero tolerance" policies, but I remain cautious about what that can mean in practice, especially so if I encounter a person or organization that seems to be putting an unusual amount of emphasis on it.
P.S. bonus points for using a race/gender based comment in your crusade against "micro aggression." I do hope that the irony was intentional.
Neither do they seem to appreciate my honest opinion that coworker X is a complete and total moron who shouldn't be allowed to tie his shoe laces unsupervised, much less be writing code.
I think that honestly is valued when we are talking about other people's ideas and efforts, but not so much when we just think the other person is an idiot/jerk/psychopath, etc.
No, most employers would not appreciate an employer's earnest report that their coworker is "a complete and total moron who shouldn't be allowed to tie his shoe laces unsupervised". I think your problems may have less to do with principles and more to do with communications.
No, they don't. Go to the Fortune 500, start at the top, and spot the first company where you can have "open, honest conversations" in the manner of a college dorm.
I don't think people are advocating for blatant sexism and harassment you see in dorms. They are advocating that a company shouldn't have an essay-length corporate policy on what their personal definition of a "micro-aggression" is and how you need to change your every day speech to remove vocabulary that 0.000001% of the population finds offensive and complains about on their tumblr page.
I am frankly disappointed with how obtuse you are being about this. I expected more from someone like you.
"Don't call team members names, and don't make jokes about their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or age." doesn't require an essay-length policy. I think I just did it in one sentence.
I don't know what to do with your last sentence. What would disturb me is if someone here believed I was sanguine about gendered hostility in the workplace.
I think you are missing the original point of the comment that started this discussion. We are discussing "micro-aggressions". Examples of micro-aggressions:
I am not discussing harassment, or jokes about any of the groups you listed. I am not discussing verbal discrimination. I am discussing micro-aggressions, the range of which varies drastically from person to person. Having a workplace that has to narrowly define what their definition of a micro-aggression is, to the point of saying "You are not allowed to comment on the appearance of a coworker in any way, even the smallest comment about their haircut or liking their shoes" is what I am, and presumably other people in this comment thread, are against.
As you can see in the PDF I linked, it's two very dense pages of explanation. Having something like this included in a corporate policy is what I find to be a bad idea. Granted, there are very obvious things in the PDF that are just plain old harassment, but there are also plenty of things that are silly to expect to enforce in a workplace.
What company are we discussing that has entered this document into their company policy?
Don't comment on coworkers appearances. It's usually unwelcome and almost always creepy. You shouldn't need a policy document to tell you that. If you have a relationship with someone in your workplace that makes those comments kosher, you already know it.
The article in the original post that prompted this entire discussion, and was quoted in the parent-most comment, was:
>This is not a company where micro-aggressions will fly.
This is implying that micro-aggressions are a fireable offense. Whether it is literally printed in policy is beside the point. The point is the "micro-aggression" concept is being enforced, the extent of which is barely touched on in that dense, two page PDF I linked you. If it isn't explicitly printed, it's frankly even worse. It's impossible to know what the scale of offensive micro-aggressions is for someone, and it probably changes from day to day.
You are also conveniently ignoring the other micro-aggression examples I gave you, which are not nearly as clear-cut as commenting on appearances. I am frankly done with this discussion unless you want to actually address why asking "Where did you grow up?" during casual conversation, and without any sort of poignant tone, should be a fireable offense. It feels like you are being deliberately evasive of the actual conversation people are trying to have.
You saw the word "micro-aggression" and implied it meant that a university's guide to micro-aggressions was to be enshrined in some company's policy.
You have also missed a step. You think the policy under discussion is that if you comment on a coworker's earrings, you can be fired instantly. Nobody has said that. However, if you continually make remarks on the attire or appearance of a coworker after being asked by that coworker not to, you should be fired. That's toxic behavior.
What's embarrassing is that teams could be so obtuse that they would even need a written policy to say that. But then: as far as we know, this company doesn't have that policy written down; they may just have the common sense policy of "if you make unwelcome comments about your coworkers after being asked not to, we will escort you out of the building".
I have obviously made the mistake of mentioning comments on appearance as being a micro-aggression, since it's frankly a terrible example and you seem to have latched on to it. Commenting on appearance in such a way it makes someone uncomfortable, repeatedly, is pretty blatantly harassment and not a micro-aggression.
I think you are still misunderstanding what a micro-aggression is. I doubt 99% of the American population has even heard the term, and 99.999% of them don't understand it well enough to make a conscious effort to never use them. To suggest that it's "not that complicated" is simply not true.
Harassment is not a micro-aggression. Most anyone who uses the term "micro-aggression" is not referring to blatant harassment.
What is the comment that is perceived as a micro-aggression which you feel you should be entitled to make after it has been made clear to you that the comment is unwelcome?
Again, you're missing the point of what a micro-aggression is. Micro-aggression is not about the repeated use of language to a specific, individual person, who has shown previous discomfort to that language. That is pretty much the definition of harassment, which again, is not a micro-aggression.
A micro-aggression would be asking Allison, during a discussion about something in our childhoods, "Where do you grow up?". Unknown to me, Allison actually grew up in Bolivia, and she is sensitive about discussing it because she feels people discriminate against her because she's an immigrant. I have micro-aggressed Allison. It has nothing to do with repeatedly asking this question, or similar questions, about where she grew up.
If Allison did respond in an uncomfortable manner to this question, I should be receptive enough to pick up on this and avoid asking further questions that might be related. Continuing to do so at that point is harassment and not a micro-aggression.
Policies against harassment are good. Policies against micro-aggression are a difficult subject, but the obvious answer isn't that "workplaces should definitely fire people for repeatedly and unknowingly micro-aggressing a variety of people".
No, that's what you're saying it is. And the claim that asking where "Allison" is from would result in you being fired is also yours and yours alone.
Am I correct in assuming that the answer to my last question is "there is no such comment on a micro-aggressions list that is OK to make to a colleague after it has been made clear that such comments are unwelcome"? If that's the case, we have nothing to argue about.
I don't believe in even the most strict enforcement of an anti-micro-aggression policy would you get fired for a single instance of it, but the point is that you can make similarly innocuous comments, each aggressing in a unique way, to multiple people - which could be enough to get fired.
And I guess we have nothing to discuss. There is no comment that is okay to repeatedly make to the same person after it's been clear that it's uncomfortable to that particular person because that is then harassment. However, just because Allison didn't like the "Where do you grow up?" question doesn't mean it's harassment to ask that of someone else (though it could still be another micro-aggression).
I am not sure why you're specifying that this is "my" definition of a micro-aggression. This is the most common, and widely accepted, definition of "micro-aggression". It is possible the person quoted misused it.
No, what's happened here is that you insist on conflating the concept of micro-aggressions with your inference of what a particular company meant by them "not flying there". To wit: you presume that if you make a benign comment about someone's hair or shoes or math talent, you'll be fired abruptly. That's a caricature of reality.
If I see a coworker that has some cool new shoes or a new jacket, I don't see the problem telling them. How is a cool new haircut any different?
Asking someone where they are from doesn't mean I think they are not "a true American." I might just be interested to know where they are from. That could be Cleveland or Dubai. I'm from the Seattle area. Are we not allowed to know anything about our coworkers?
If I saw a coworker juggling in the break room and I asked them how they got so good at it (because I have tried for years to get it and still suck at it) then we have some good conversation about juggling. That question doesn't come loaded with a "because usually women suck at juggling" qualifier. The same is true about math.
I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.
As I understand it from friends and acquaintances, being asked again and again, "So where are you from?" becomes exceptionally irritating over time and can feel isolating. It might be a question that anyone can get asked, but it gets asked much more frequently of people who appear to be "foreign" in some way. It's not a big deal once or twice, but those incidents pile up over time and it can get disheartening, especially when asked of people who are from the US. When they answer, they often get the follow up question, "No, no, where are you really from?" It's a good way to unintentionally make a person feel unwelcome or like an "other" in a group, because after many repetitions, it hammers home the point, "You don't fit in, and I can plainly see it."
And the problem with the math question is that when asked of a woman or a girl, it generally does come loaded with "because usually women suck at math". Math isn't juggling, which is an uncommon talent; math is a basic, fundamental skill in STEM fields. Acting surprised or questioning how a female coworker "got so good at math" is just one more way that people accidentally perpetuate outdated, outmoded stereotypes about women in STEM fields. It's a question that almost nobody would think to ask of a male coworker. Because math skills are taken as a given in these sorts of fields.
These things don't seem like a big deal until you're on the receiving end of them again and again and again, day after day, month after month, year after year. Just like a little trickle of stream will eventually erode a valley where there wasn't one previously, over time all the little slights and knocks can wear people down.
Nobody is saying, "Don't be nice to your coworkers, and don't be social." They are saying, "Be mindful of the things you say, because they can hurt people unintentionally." Maybe you don't see the problem, personally, but if it's something that bothers a lot of people and they ask you to please cut it out, is it really that big a deal to try to cut it out? It's not like it's some kind of major encumbrance upon you.
> I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.
No, what you're doing is inventing a context (bad man hurt woman, bad white man hurting good minority etc), and arguing for a lexicon that implicitly nurtures the contextual penumbra and emanations of left-wing culture warriors. And you're singing a soothing melody of how this tool (it is a tool) will be used to fight injustice. But that's not how it goes. That's never how it goes.
Given that I'm a man, I'm certainly not inventing any context that involves caveman speak about "bad man hurt woman". I wasn't even really talking about the direct interpersonal context of the remarks, I was talking about the remarks in the context of the larger experience of the person on the receiving end of them.
You can't just ignore the larger life experiences that people have. You can't treat every social interaction in some kind of hermetic isolation. Because that's not how social interactions happen. There's the context of the interpersonal relationship(s) of the people involved in an interaction, their history, their previous interactions. And, as I said, there's the context of each person's life experience that they bring to any social interaction.
Obviously, we don't think about this sort of thing on a deep level all the time. It'd short out every social interaction if we constantly tried to puzzle out every nuance of this context.
But we don't have to, we have short-hands, and we have "models" that we follow that work well most of the time. But when some large portion of a group of people says, "Hey, this part of the social interaction model is broken, and it's hurtful," there's no good reason to not at least reevaluate it and think about it. It's good to spend some time considering the nuances sometimes, even if it's not good to do it all the time.
If you really don't like the academic term "microaggression", then just think about it as "mild rudeness". Mild rudeness isn't the worst thing ever. But it's still not a way you should behave toward colleagues. You should endeavor to be polite, professional, and courteous towards those you work with. Personally, I'd want to know if I was accidentally doing something rude. I'd be a bit mortified a first, but I'd rather know so that I can curtail that behavior.
I think it's kind of absurd how negative the reaction is to, "Hey, can you please stop saying that; it's honestly a bit rude." It's not like it costs people anything. Courtesy is free, and it's no great imposition. And even when the courteousness involves more delicate matters of race, gender, marginalization, etc. it remains free.
It is enough that you simply respect when someone tells you that your comments about their juggling or their cool new haircut is alienating, instead of freaking out about how you intended only to compliment them. That's all you have to do.
Nobody is asking you to memorize a dictionary of "microaggressions".
I agree and if I was told something like that after my first interaction, I'd refrain. The problem is when the first time it happens it is met with a trip to HR, or public shaming on social media, or getting fired, or all of the above. Which is why we kind of are being asked to memorize a dictionary of microaggressions. Quite literally anything that comes out of a person's mouth has potential to offend someone. And when it does, they can get crucified for it. If we were allowed to ask people "why are you so quiet" we might actually get a fair number of people answering with "because I'd rather just not talk to you than risk offending you."
To make this discussion meaningful, can you cite a case of someone being fired for making non-harassing comments about a coworker's appearance, interesting accent, surprising math talent, or anything else even remotely like the premise you've set up in your comment?
Sorry, I can not cite a specific case of someone getting fired for one of those things.
Edit: The only thing I can think of is "dongle-gate" but that is likely to just go off into a tangent about what is or is not "non-harassing" and I kind of suspect we won't agree on that either so that is not going to be very productive.
Based on what I understand about it, I think "dongle-gate" was an embarrassment for just about everyone involved. One company doing something fabulously stupid in response to some other stupid thing is not a good basis for a discussion of company policy.
Let me see if I understand correctly. I think we both agree that firing someone for just one accidental "micro-aggression" would not be right... possibly even stupid. And you asked me to cite a case of that happening... or "anything else even remotely like" it. But then when I cite a case (admittedly not a great one) you reject it on the grounds that it is just one company doing something fabulously stupid. I am opting to disengage at this point because I don't really think you are interested in making this discussion meaningful. We'll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.
This is the view most people have, and why trying to stop micro-aggressions is a difficult subject. It's really more of a societal and moral question - how much should we change our behavior to prevent offending people? To what extent can we say someone's offense is valid?
Obviously if I tell you that wearing shorts is offensive to me, you shouldn't feel the need to stop wearing shorts. This isn't even a made-up opinion - people feel this way about women all over the globe. This means there are definitely limits to what we should accept. But the question is, where do we draw the line?
That is why implementing this in a workplace isn't feasible in 2016, because you have to explicitly define that line, which is a very difficult thing to do, and especially so for people who don't even know what a "micro-aggression" is.
The "problem" with all of your statements isn't that they are offensive, but that the person you said them to happened to have some sort of background or experience that makes it offensive to them.
Yeah it's almost like importing the lingua franca of a bunch of extremists into your organizational policy isn't necessary and that the actual sensible part of it can be easily summarised in simple and straight forward english. Hmmm...
They should lead with their business successes (even if not profitable, they can talk about customer satisfaction, compelling use cases, differentiation, and growth), and follow up with "and we are also a great place for women to work, and we think other businesses can be, too".
If you choose business as a battleground, then you are implicitly setting up the success criteria as business success. So leaving that out and just focusing on hiring ratios and employee happiness feels incomplete.
It's foolish, and, honestly, kind of offensive, to imply that pushing diversity and at the same time pushing business success are somehow at odds with each other. There was an excellent segment that talked about almost this exact thing on Reply All a few weeks ago. If you skip to the second half, I'd recommend listening to it. They talk about how businesses benefit from diversity, how diverse groups perform better and get better results than groups chosen just on "qualifications", and they also address the annoyance at the fact that "success" and "diversity" are seen as competing goals, in stark rejection of evidence. They also talk about how things that don't seem like a big deal can really wear minority employees down:
I didn't say or imply anywhere that they were at odds, nor do I think they are in general.
Rather, the business success part of the narrative was missing in this particular case, leaving an inconclusive feeling.
I recommend that you give others the benefit of the doubt and make a real effort to understand what they are trying to say, rather than assuming they are wrong merely because the comment triggers a politically-incorrect reflex. You're comment leads to an environment where people are afraid to contribute new ideas to the discussion.
"It's foolish, and, honestly, kind of offensive, to imply that pushing diversity and at the same time pushing business success are somehow at odds with each other."
Offensive? We're not even allowed to disagree with you about meta-level issues now? Nobody is being insulted or harassed, no one is being subjected to prejudicial remarks about any facet of their being -- and yet it's still, somehow, offensive?
By saying, "Pushing to get more even representation is at odds with business success or product quality," which is often outright stated and even more often pretty directly implied, people are basically saying, "Those 'diverse' people are inherently poorer workers with worse quality output." That's the subtext, and that's what I think is kind of offensive about that line of argument.
Coming from a machining background, the product they have created is a $2000USD mini mill with the largest tool being a .125" endmill. Their specs list a precision of .001". Now is that TIR, X/Y travel, or backlash?
The work envelope is 5.5x4.5x1.35 which is small. This looks like a purpose built PCB mill.
Does PCB manufacturing require a $2k+ mill? Is sampling a PCB not cheaper?
Haha yeah they could have just re-branded a Sherline mini mill, had better specs, and even paying retail for it they would have made a healthy profit at $2000 a pop.
So ... can we men get a gender neutral term for "mansplaining" ?
Men are not the only ones who do this. Yes the name comes from a male biased behaviour in the tech community but I have witnessed plenty of this out in about in non tech fields... "oh your an man, there's no way you would understand" or starting to explain something before asking if I need an explanation how it works, because why would a man ever need to know how a thing, like say a sewing machine, worked...
Calling it "mansplaining" (which is in my iPhones dictionary!?) does nothing to help stamp out this behaviour as undesirable. It arguably provides excuses for women to engage in the behaviour since they aren't "men" how can they be "mansplaining", and contributes to its continued existence by allowing this "mode of interaction" to continue regardless of gender.
Other than that. Awesome company, and I hadn't heard of the product despite having a need for something like that. So I may buy that milling machine in the future which is pretty cool.
>women to engage in the behaviour since they aren't "men" how can they be "mansplaining",
Stuff like this is really bothersome. Another example is when a woman is clearly being a misogynist, but thinks that's impossible because she's a woman too. The worst and most sexist things I've ever heard were from white professional women who think the rules don't apply to them, epsecially if they are discussing younger more attractive women or poorer, less educated women. And in the workplace no less!
I think we live in an absurd level of PC pressure and I think that partly explains why guys like Trump are doing so well in the polls. People are just sick of navigating this stuff and its all fairly arbitrary. Ignoring this isn't doing anyone any good, especially the Democrats who keep losing elections. Not sure what the solution here is, but I hope the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. The fact that 'mansplaining' is in the iphone dictionary is especially odious. Its a straight up slur. Being a tonedeaf know-it-all knows no gender.
> Another example is when a woman is clearly being a misogynist, but thinks that's impossible because she's a woman too.
Do you mean misandrist, perhaps?
Misogyny is literally about hating women. A woman can be a misogynist, but only by hating women. A woman (or a man) that hates men is a misandrist.
Somebody who hates people regardless of gender is a misanthrope.
> The fact that 'mansplaining' is in the iphone dictionary is especially odious. Its a straight up slur. Being a tone-deaf know-it-all knows no gender.
Of course mansplaining is a slure. Misogynist is a slur as well. That is the point of that sort of word.
I think he actually did mean misogynist - women that dislike even other women and try to keep them from positions of power and authority absolutely do exist. Female competition exists, after all, and oftentimes social minorities that climb into positions of authority adopt the cultural biases of those that held power before them (see: accusations within disadvantaged communities for "acting white" or acting "like you're better than everyone else").
It can be difficult to determine if a leader is adopting a cultural meme or if there's something intrinsic to the person. There's a bit of a disturbing trend in the military where even female commanding officers will shy away from acknowledging cases of sexual assault against female personnel. Furthermore, there's evidence for private sector that women that get promoted oftentimes try to act more "like a man" in aggression and even bias against female subordinates, sometimes even to the point where they're more exclusionary than their male counterparts ever were. I can't provide citations right now for them but the first can be Googled quickly I presume.
In my defence, that wasn't what the comment said when I replied to it. :) (What I quoted was the entire paragraph at the time.)
But, is a woman who criticises other women necessarily a misogynist? It's no more necessarily true of a woman than of a man who criticizes women. If a man criticizes other men, we don't immediately accuse him of misandry: of criticizing those men because they are men.
If a woman criticizes other women for, e.g., using their looks - and possibly more - to get ahead, is she really displaying hatred towards "women", or just those women?
I am, to be clearer than I really should have to be, not saying that women can't be misogynists, or that the only thing women criticize other women for is using their sexuality to get ahead. But women criticizing women isn't automatically misogyny: it may simply be criticism.
In my work life, I see men criticizing women (and vice versa) all the time. There is never a hint of anyone thinking that man-to-woman criticism is being only given, or is only as pointed as it is, because of the sexes of the people involved. Maybe I'm just lucky that my co-workers are professionals. (It's about a 30/70 female/male split in my workplace, FYI.)
In my personal life, I really don't see much of people criticising anyone, except each other. Maybe I don't hang with the right people.
With one recurring exception, I cannot recall an instance from my "real life" in the past decade, say, where I've seen a woman criticised for something where a man wouldn't have been criticized in the same way. The exception being the automatic assumption many (but of course not all) drivers have that any bad driver must be a woman: whilst a man will still be criticized for bad driving, he is a bad driver because he is a bad driver, whilst a bad woman driver is a bad driver because she is a woman.
Online, I see (presumed) men criticising (presumed) women all the time. Naturally, said criticism is not necessarily very constructive. Perhaps it is just my bias, but criticism of women seems to far more often focus on her gender and sexuality than criticism of men does.
I find it surprising that I see so many negative votes in a thread of discussion that, considering the subject matter, is extremely civil and respectful.
I was actually concerned I would be down voted, I've got a few, no loss to me. But I'm amazed at some of the down votes I see deeper in the thread... :-/
Words are not their etymologies. Mansplaining is gender neutral if it is used in a gender neutral way.
A woman who understands the meaning of mansplaining will not believe that it is only bad to be patronizing[1] if you are a man because the word "mansplaining" exists, any more than she would believe she is not a human being because the word "mankind" exists.
Conversely, a woman who is already of the opinion that men can't understand how sewing machines work isn't going to be shamed into adopting a new opinion because somebody coined the word "condesplaining".
[1] Of course, "patronize" is a gendered term if we go by its etymology.
I agree, I also think it unlikely that the adoption of the term 'mansplaining' encourages non-men to patronize more people.
On the other hand, what I understand from the criticism of the term is that it hurts some people to hear it used. We choose our language because we don't want to cause others pain; when someone tells me that calling someone a b*tch causes them pain I stop using the word around them. If I have reason to believe that using the word causes a lot of people pain then I stop using it in public. Similarly, lots of people (some reference below) are pained by words like 'mansplain' and 'manspread.' If someone tells me that they are pained by it, I don't go and try and convince them that the word is actually fine to use and they shouldn't be pained, I stop using the word.
>On the other hand, what I understand from the criticism of the term is that it hurts some people to hear it used.
It has a negative definition. It was chosen to be a gendered word, a tongue in cheek attack on the prevalence of accidentally gendered words like mankind and manslayer. When we are moving away from words that use the root word man to avoid accidental gendering, why would a new word be created that is gendered if it is not an attack on that gender?
"Words are not their etymologies. Mansplaining is gender neutral if it is used in a gender neutral way."
You make a valid point, but some words are just inappropriate for most contexts because the general lack of understanding of them causes unnecessary tension. To me this is a clear flaw in a communication model that I believe "mansplaining" falls under.
Another example would be the word "niggardly." These words pretty much only have use in an academic setting at best.
Thats great for those enlightened enough to understand the phrase with some comprehension. Alas, all of humanity is not that wise - I've had to deal with 'mansplaining' too many times from women, as well as men, for it to make any sense for there to be any gender-form in the phrase. And justifying this just doesn't make any sense. Its a terrible phrase, and should be replaced with something that doesn't imply that the phenomenon has anything to do with ones sex.
Have you seen people regularly use the word "mansplaining" to describe the actions of any women (while knowing that the person they were referring to was a woman)?
I don't believe that I have seen that.
The meaning of words is not their etymology, but it is how they are used and understood.
And, ime, people seem to use the word "mansplaining" to refer to actions of (people that they believe to be) men (or corporations?).
Perhaps your experience differs on this topic though?
So basically, they "solved" Silicon Valley's "Woman Problem" by turning away a large number of qualified male applicants and hired from the smaller pool of females.
Sounds like gender discrimination to me.
A truly non discriminatory workplace would have a ratio of male/female employees that was in line with the ratio of qualified male/female applicants (even if that meant more males than females). Just saying.