Comment by seatdrummer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seatdrummer | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Do you think that women simultaneously being the victim and being empowered, the company bending over backwards to increase female numbers and create special awards/events specifically for women won't create some frustration among the innocent male employees who have to pretend like they have to change the way they act around women to avoid talking over them, watching their time around women ( things like saying "Id love to go out but my ball and chain won't let me go"). The slightest criticism against women needs to be considered through a lens of misogyny and if it's plausible you keep quiet. It's just as simple as ignoring whatever the diversity efforts say about you and the situation at work. Don't divulge even a glimpse that you aren't along for the ride. Honestly sometimes silence or lack of enthusiasm makes you suspect.

It's very obvious that gender equality being achieved in the workplace is not via reduced discrimination, but by hiring women at a very flexible bar. It's so painfully obvious in my organization and frankly im embarrassed for the qualified women who are getting tarnished by the changes.

"Id love to go out but my ball and chain won't let me go"

Or maybe you keep such shitty things to yourself and the painfully obvious is visible to anyone but you.

Honestly don't see the problem with that line. I can't imagine how many times a woman has referred to her husband as another one of the kids to take care of.

Its not shitty, its insanely normal (and its a joke) and youre just being dramatic.

Again, maybe you’re missing the painfully obvious when honestly not seeing any issues with that line.

He isn't.

People are hiring more women because it improves performance and productivity [1].

It is true people would expect you to “change the way you act” so as not to make women literally uncomfortable around you, how outrageous that you should have to do this.

> The slightest criticism against women needs to be considered through a lens of misogyny and if it's plausible you keep quiet.

> It's very obvious that gender equality being achieved in the workplace is not via reduced discrimination, but by hiring women at a very flexible bar.

Wrong on both, and you have no evidence to support this.

[1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter

"Does it make somebody feel uncomfortable" is a terrible standard to use when deciding whether something is OK or not.

Growing up Mormon, I felt extremely uncomfortable when co-workers drank alcohol in the office, even in after-hours social contexts. Does that mean I had a legitimate grievance to ask those around me not to drink?

We can certainly come up with gender neutral standards about what kind of speech or activities are OK and which are not OK, but if we go with "does it make women feel uncomfortable" then we also need to extend it to "does it make Mormons feel uncomfortable" and "does it make polyamorists feel uncomfortable," and so on ad infinitum.

> People are hiring more women because it improves performance and productivity [1].

I think the hbr article has cause and effect backwards.

It’s obvious that wealthy stable high margin businesses can afford to focus on diversity initiatives.

If we were actually confident that diverse teams were better then gender and race would no longer need to be protected groups.

>so as not to make women literally uncomfortable around you, how outrageous that you should have to do this.

One could make a similar argument for not calling out racism to avoid making people uncomfortable.

Not agreeing with OP, but citing single studies is often pretty misleading. It is better to look for meta studies because the outcomes typically vary considerably, so you cannot be sure a single study is reliable.

Here are two meta studies based on 20 and 140 other studies, respectively, and they only find a weak to no link between gender diversity and productivity, so neither does the science prove that gender diversity is particular beneficial, nor that it is harmful:

https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2013.0319

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Look, I am speaking from personal and anecdotal experience, however its so blindly obvious for myself and coworkers. The amount of dissonance between my beliefs and my actions at work feels like a micro scale version of what life would be like under a surveillance state. The difference in openness between the two large groups of people that have opposing views at work are massive. Both groups have smart people, both groups have good intentions, the ones that are silent are not silent because they hold chauvinist views, they are silent because the other side is actually bigoted.

I wish you could do a study on it, but you can't right now.

> People are hiring more women because it improves performance and productivity

> those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.

Let's play spot the difference...

You're wrong. I've participated in it, multiple times, due to a mandate from upper management, at a well known company.

I don't know how to get through to people who are absolutely convinced that people who claim it's happening are just being paranoid insecure sexists leading to biased assumptions, and I don't understand why their mind refuses to consider the possibility that these people are correct.

Is it even surprising? Of course it's going to happen. Everyone is getting sued over this, and there is activism and PR wars everywhere. How do you think companies are going to respond? Nobody wants to be next, so they have to increase representation. Executives cannot actually do anything to increase representation, other than set goals for their employees to carry out. That is how execs manage. By the time it gets down to the rank-and-file, how to do it doesn't matter. They know it needs to get done, and nobody wants to be the reason that an exec's goals are not met, so they will just make it happen. This happens with goals all the time, and number of women hired is in no way different. Remember when Microsoft told shareholders they were going to get 1 billion devices running Windows 10, and what they started doing to forcefully upgrade machines? If the rank and file resort to force installing Windows to meet that goal, how do you think a company like MS are going to handle meeting their diversity targets? Or Wells Fargo with their account opening scandal that was motivated by executive goals for numbers of new accounts?

This sucks for everybody, but most of all for the people it's supposed to help. Now, those who did meet the bar look just like those who didn't meet the bar but were hired as tokens. Looking the same would not be an issue were it not for identity politics.

You've captured my thoughts on this to the T. I feel people are too emotionally involved to have rational, civilized, productive discussion... but for very very understandable reasons. After all, the whole topic of identity politics revolves around, well, one's identity, and self worth and livelihood.

It's hard to separate one's ego from something as visceral as that.

It's easy to posit that those unaffected could form "more objective" observations when emotions are not in play.

I say this while aware of the potential biases inherent in both of these statements. So what can be done to better approach this? It's hard.

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