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Comment by CobrastanJorji | Hacker News Reader

I'm no expert, but isn't "let's just hire only women for a while to balance out the numbers" going to violate a whole bunch of employment regulations?

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Yeah, but who cares?

I'm not making a normative statement here, I'm simply stating the fact that no one will come after you if you do this. Companies and colleges say all the time that they're looking for a specific ratio of races and genders and nothing happens to them.

I would very much like to see an example of a major company publishing its desired specific ratios of races and genders.

Not a ratio per say, but there was this[0] recent controversy

[0]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/03/bbc-criticised-by...

I think you are talking about affirmative action, not so much a specific guide to hiring process. The law states that x ratio of specific minorities have to be hired/enrolled per year as a catch up mechanism that is largely outdated in 2016.

As far as University enrollment, women have led the numbers for years so that isn't really at the heart of it. More so the subjects they choose as a major/minor being the issue.

Marketing STEM majors to minorities and women has been a priority for a short amount of time, so we will see how it pans out in the next decade.

And that also means that at some point (ideally in the very near future), we're just going to have to be OK with the idea that not all women want to be STEM majors. This necessarily and explicitly means that the ratio will never be 50/50.

We're all ok with the idea that men don't really want to be early childhood educators (Pre-k through grade 2). It's a big deal when a guy applies for those jobs, according to teachers I know. Then, of course, come the endless jokes about the pedophile trying to get a job with kids, how he is going to need a female escort when dealing with the kids, etc.

Well, not entirely true:

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/01/479795967/asian-american-group...

> Companies and colleges say all the time that they're looking for a specific ratio of races and genders and nothing happens to them.

That's because that's not illegal.

Hiring only X (gender/race/etc.) to achieve the ratio you want, OTOH, is among the many means to realize such targets that are illegal.

> colleges say all the time that they're looking for a specific ratio of races and genders and nothing happens to them.

This was specifically found unconstitutional in Bakke (1979)[1] and had very real consequences for UC Davis. While I don't know about the internals of any state university admission programs, I find it highly unlikely any state schools would publicly acknowledge that they seek specific racial quotas as that puts them in immediate and grave legal jeopardy.

[1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/76-811

No. If you're a white male, that's bad. Anything else is diversity.

They'll come up with some bullshit like "since women aren't the majority of hiring managers, this doesn't count as discrimination" or something. Like they have with racism (where black people in America literally can't be racist).

I'll just point out that white males are very well represented in Tech.

Of course, the corollary to what you're saying is: "If you're a white male and you get hired, that's on merit, everyone else is hired for diversity reasons."

Affirmative action is not only legal, it's required in academia if a university wants federal funding. I'm not sure if minority genderbased- affirmative action is required, but minority race is definitely a requirement.

> Affirmative action is not only legal, it's required in academia if a university wants federal funding.

Yes, but what many people stereotype "affirmative action" as being, or at least including -- notably, including the upthread suggestion characterized as "let's just hire only women for a while to balance out the numbers" -- is not only not required even in that context, it is quite illegal (and would be equally illegal if, say, "blacks" replaced "women" in the description.)

If that's what you do, then yes. If you choose instead to only advertise your positions at women-focused conferences and programs, the legality changes. You haven't prevented men from applying and being accepted, you've instead changed the audience of your advertising, which will change who applies.

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