[HN Gopher] Ad men sacked to improve gender pay gap win sex disc...
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Ad men sacked to improve gender pay gap win sex discrimination
claim
Author : thinkingemote
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-07-25 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| [deleted]
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| > Two white male creative directors at a top London advertising
| agency have won a sex discrimination claim after a female
| director vowed to "obliterate" its Mad Men reputation of being
| full of straight, white men.
|
| director kept Mad Men reputation of shitty management... pay gap
| is a reflection of shitty management that is causing bad hiring
| practice.
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| First of many such cases, if the allegations I've heard are at
| all representative.
|
| It's a tough ask for businesses - they either replace their
| existing, presumably qualified staff due to their inherent
| characteristics being unfashionable, or they create new positions
| and fill those with people with other characteristics for purely
| statistical purposes.
|
| Doing the latter exacerbates the "fifth column" situation that in
| turn increases the chance of situations like that in the OP.
|
| Seems like a poisoned chalice from the first sip, but I may be
| biased due to my inherent characteristics.
| jackjeff wrote:
| You can't fight racism and sexism by using "reparative" racism
| and sexism. Going after straight white men because of their
| identity is as abhorrent as any other form of racism/sexism.
| anamexis wrote:
| Wouldn't "reparative" here have been hiring a more diverse
| cohort, and paying them more?
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| That would be a way to address the underlying complaint. But
| it wouldn't be "reparative".
|
| The perversion here is the assumption that the next minority
| you hire is a complete stand-in for the implicitly-assumed
| minority who missed out before, leading to the existing
| imbalance.
| tpoacher wrote:
| mathematically speaking, sexism is an idempotent operation.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| I can sympathise with the men in this story. I have sat in on
| meetings where HR was telling Engineering that tech skills and
| experience did not matter; only the sex and race of the hired
| candidate.
|
| How did HR get so much power? Most of them are barely out of
| University and at least at my org are a homogenous group of white
| women.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Why are there so few men in HR? And where can I complain to
| have these demographics changed?
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| > How did HR get so much power?
|
| Mostly by citing requirements for legal compliance, followed by
| minimizing liability and'industry standards'.
|
| Technologists would be wise to use these tools with more skill.
| azangru wrote:
| Are there any specific legal requirements for companies
| regarding the demographics of their workforce? That would
| help explain why companies are so eager to spearhead those
| changes.
| azangru wrote:
| > I have sat in on meetings where HR was telling Engineering
| that tech skills and experience did not matter; only the sex
| and race of the hired candidate.
|
| Fascinating! I have not yet had a chance to hear it admitted
| openly. Usually the implication is that the appropriate skills
| and experience can be found in any demographic (e.g.:
| https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1400665677501853696)
| BigBubbleButt wrote:
| I recently interviewed for a job because my friend asked me
| to and put in the recommendation. They refused to interview
| me and just said they weren't interested. My friend got back
| to me and said "I'm pretty sure it's because you're a white
| male." It's speculation, but it probably happens more often
| than you think.
|
| I also used to be on several hiring committees and it was
| very obvious that HR essentially forced non-white-males to be
| hired in some instances.
|
| This is not some "white men have it hard" diatribe. Obviously
| as a white male I experience incredible privilege overall.
| But at least in tech they seem to have swung so far the other
| way that there is _some_ discrimination against white males.
| I 'm not mad, we all have to play the hands we're dealt and
| honestly being born a white male is about as good as it gets
| with regards to demographics. Just sharing my anecdotes.
| speeder wrote:
| While looking for a job in my country I saw a company
| EXPLICITLY advertise they wanted to hire a woman for a coder
| job, and men shouldn't apply.
|
| This is outright illegal here, so I sent anonymously a
| screenshot of that to our government. The person that replied
| was a female judge, that said what the company is doing is
| fixing historical distortions so it is fine.
|
| Thing is... it is still illegal (in fact companies here that
| really need a specific gender, for example when hiring female
| airport security so they can deal with female passengers and
| whatnot, companies go through crazy legal hoops, because our
| gender discrimination law has no exception, no loophole,
| nothing).
| MikeUt wrote:
| > How did HR get so much power?
|
| HR only appears to have power because they are going along with
| the prevailing political trends [1,2,3]. If they tried to
| oppose them, or go in the opposite direction, you would quickly
| see how empty their power is.
|
| [1] White men must be stopped: The very future of mankind
| depends on it -
| https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_t...
|
| [2] the diversity trainers led a "free association" exercise,
| asking the Lockheed employees to list connotations for the term
| "white men." The trainers wrote down "old," "racist,"
| "privileged," "anti-women," "angry," "Aryan Nation," "KKK,"
| "Founding fathers," "guns," "guilty," and "can't jump." -
| https://www.city-journal.org/lockheed-martins-woke-industria...
|
| [3] Another slide suggests "try to be less white" with tips
| including "be less oppressive," "listen," "believe" and "break
| with white solidarity." - https://nypost.com/2021/02/23/coca-
| cola-diversity-training-u...
| jrsj wrote:
| I dunno probably because they can have you fired if you
| disagree with them, and worse since they often know each other
| across different companies cause problems for you getting jobs
| in the future too
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Homogenous groups of white cishet women at HR departments are
| also a travesty IMO. I highly doubt there isn't something going
| on internally that make it unfriendly to diverse perspectives
| (whether from a person of color, an lgbtqia+ person, or a man)
| that is an HR nightmare waiting to happen.
| tillinghast wrote:
| Please, do tell, how many intersectionality points do we need
| to win this game?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I don't think its a point system. I just think if an
| _entire department_ of any company beyond "small" is
| homogenously one demographic then there's likely a sign
| that something is going wonky with how that department is
| hiring/retaining staff. I'd be suspicious of an entire
| engineering department (of a company of any significant
| size) that all came from one school, if I was applying to
| that company and I wasn't from that school.
|
| It's simple group psychology that an extremely uniform
| group is likely heavily biasing itself for more of that
| extremely uniform demographic. If that extremely uniform
| group is of one specific race, gender, or sexuality, that
| might be a yellow (or red) flag.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Pretty simple, if you oppose them then you're an easy target to
| be branded enemy of women. So most people who need their job
| will just nod and not risk opposing HR.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I feel that these gender pay gap focuses are really thinking too
| small. The general argument of a pay gap is that there is a
| _systemic_ problem. Firing individual men just because they 're
| men is pants-on-head even trying to follow the logic that there
| are systemic hurdles for women in some space.
| lumost wrote:
| Pay averages are dominated by outliers. These outliers tend to
| either be due to negotiation power, seniority, or performance
| incentive.
|
| Odds are good that the outliers will cluster in your most over
| represented group, this group will then have a pay discrepancy
| with other groups.
|
| A company can correct this by banning the practices that lead
| to outliers, ensuring outliers are evenly represented across
| groups, and by eliminating those with outlier compensation. In
| firms that lock in compensation for long periods such as
| through partnerships or equity comp ensuring equal distribution
| of outlier compensation can be complex and difficult.
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(page generated 2021-07-25 23:01 UTC)