[HN Gopher] Study finds, surprisingly, that women are favored fo...
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       Study finds, surprisingly, that women are favored for jobs in STEM
        
       Author : kvee
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2022-01-10 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
        
       | ceras wrote:
       | Note that the headline is overly broad: this is just for tenure-
       | track academic jobs. Non-academic jobs weren't in scope for this
       | study.
       | 
       | More specifically, it covered these academic jobs in these
       | departments: biology, engineering, economics and psychology.
        
       | draw_down wrote:
       | Anyone who's been involved in STEM recruiting in recent years is
       | likely to be less surprised.
        
       | 0xy wrote:
       | How is this surprising? Anyone who has been even tangentially
       | close to hiring in tech has to know this. It's very rarely
       | written policy (because it's illegal behavior), but more of a
       | _wink wink nudge nudge_ , of "gee, it would be great if we could
       | hire more women, interviewer".
       | 
       | Some biased hiring policies exist to this day, notable in Google
       | and other big names. Certain demographics are given a 2nd chance
       | interview if the first is bombed, among the more implicit biases.
       | You won't find this written anywhere, of course. The big names
       | don't want their illegal behavior to come out during discovery.
       | 
       | This research is also backed up by blind hiring experiments.
       | Studies have shown that stripping name and gender from resumes
       | results in less women and less minorities from being selected for
       | interview (suggesting positive bias). Such blind hiring trials
       | are quickly shuttered and swept under the rug to avoid rattling
       | the PC orthodoxy.
        
         | 908B64B197 wrote:
         | > Such blind hiring trials are quickly shuttered and swept
         | under the rug to avoid rattling the PC orthodoxy.
         | 
         | France tried it and it backfired spectacularly.
         | 
         | It's kinda sad because it creates two categories of devs when
         | looking at internal hiring: people you know are there on merit
         | and people who maybe got a little bit of help from "the quota".
         | 
         | I've heard it (in engineering only meetings) "you know this guy
         | is solid, he went to X and he's asian so you know he's there
         | for the right reasons".
         | 
         | Something I have to wonder is are women and minorities... ok
         | with this?
        
           | LorenPechtel wrote:
           | And the anti-discrimination morons look at that sort of thing
           | and think it's discrimination against women and minorities.
        
       | oversocialized wrote:
       | Duh, just look at the duckduckgo fiasco. Tech was the one area
       | meritocracy was the norm and now that is changing. IMO resumes
       | and tech interviews should be screened blindly without regard to
       | name, sex, race or college.
        
       | rowanG077 wrote:
       | I'm surprised that people thought women aren't favored.
        
       | LeroyRaz wrote:
       | I find it funny how deeply sexist the representation of findings
       | like this are. Essentially the finding is that men, according to
       | their study, are hugely discriminated against. This lack of
       | meritocracy is not considered or portrayed as bad, but rather
       | described as a great step forward for women.
       | 
       | One sees similar portrayals of e.g. the gender education gap,
       | which massively favours girls, as a triumph, rather than a
       | problem. Sometimes the massively higher rate of male homelessness
       | is even made out to be about how our statistics must be biased
       | against registering women who are slumming it by e.g. couch
       | surfing... There seems a massive bias in the social sciences
       | against men.
        
         | scarmig wrote:
         | One of the things that always amuses me is when people complain
         | about the underrepresentation of women in STEM majors. Why?
         | It's actually 50/50. Women are only underrepresented in STEM
         | majors in the sense that they aren't as overrepresented in them
         | as they are in non-STEM areas of study.
        
           | fivea wrote:
           | > Why? It's actually 50/50.
           | 
           | Is it, though? I'm sure it's not, and the ratio of women to
           | men is much much lower. I know of a FANG which rejects male
           | candidates with PhDs but goes to the extents of admitting
           | female candidates with a single boot camp on their resume,
           | and even then most teams barely have more than a couple of
           | women in their ranks.
        
             | scarmig wrote:
             | Source: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/static
             | /data/tab...
             | 
             | It's true that in CS in particular, there are more men
             | graduating than women. But people should say that instead
             | of just "STEM."
             | 
             | And they should probably express concern about not enough
             | men studying e.g. biology, especially since many of the
             | career paths that biology is a prerequisite for are
             | relatively stable and well-paying.
        
           | midiguy wrote:
           | Maybe in S.... in TEM (especially computer science and
           | engineering) there is no way it is close to 50/50.
        
             | scarmig wrote:
             | STEM is a well defined category. As a whole, it's split
             | pretty much 50/50.
             | 
             | I'm sure you can slice and dice it into subcategories and
             | then pick and choose those that have a higher number of
             | men, but I can do the exact same thing with those
             | subcategories you arbitrarily exclude to create a mirror
             | image showing how STEM is biased against men. But it's a
             | silly game.
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-10 23:02 UTC)