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Comment by GenerocUsername | Hacker News Reader

Good. I've never seen a non-emotional argument for diversity and inclusovity programs.

A company has no need to represent society as a whole, or worse, a duty to equalize societies inequalities.

Any attempt to do so inherently harms as many people as it helps, it just moved the harm to groups unprotected by emotional arguments

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There are studies that found that companies earn more when their boards and management are 50/50 men and women.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-08/more-women-means-more...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/why-companies-with-female-ma...

This is backwards thinking. Companies who have 50/50 male/female management are likely smarter companies, picking up smart women who are looked over for other roles and because they are smart enough to do that they likely do other smart things. It is the effect of a well run company not the cause of it. If your company is working working the other way they are dumb.

I completely agree that you can't better a body of people by forcing it to modify its constituents into a defined range of racial/gender ratios (and it may even be the case that you will worsen it on average). However, there is another goal: To help the individuals who would not have been hired. Of course, there's an argument to be made that any harm you might do to the body would then ultimately harm the individuals you helped to be placed in it, but I tend to believe that these opposing forces balance out on the net good side for the individuals.

This might be a bias due to the fact that most companies are started by men (probably more inclined to take larger risks), and that companies need to reach a relatively successful state before the initial members of board and management have been circulated.

But do we trust these studies? We shouldn't! I've read some of them before and they usually make basic errors of logic or statistics. For instance sometimes they take the gender makeup of boards across the world, and then look at how much (absolute) money the companies make. They end up including countries like Saudi Arabia in that, and in the inverse, countries with laws that force women onto boards. So they end up concluding "companies with women on the boards make more money" but all they're really measuring is "companies in richer countries make more money than poorer countries".

It's a sexist conclusion anyway. These studies are basically arguing women are better decision makers than men. Would people so passively accept studies concluding that companies do better when women are kept out of certain roles? I bet not.

There are studies for everything.

I love when people want to force something for “their own benefit”. I’m so glad you’re so concerned about my profits.

“Companies” covers a lot of territory. Market sizes, markets, local laws, etc.

The implication is that there is some innate quality in women that men lack and cannot acquire. Funny, the feminist movement spent decades fighting that myth.

I too have seen many emotional arguments for diversity programs, but it's honestly hard to believe you have "never" seen a non-emotional argument for one. Ironically, it suggests an overriding emotional negativity you have associated with diversity programs.

So quick question: Does your same argument also apply to ageism? Should it be OK for companies to discriminate based on a candidate's age and only hire say, people below the age of 40?

Or what about candidates that might have to use a wheelchair to get around?

How is this not also an emotional argument?

Here’s the non emotional reason: diversity kills the organization of labour. It’s much harder to organize a union when you look around a lunch room and subconsciously feel disconnected from your coworkers and maybe don’t even speak their language.

Repeatedly referring to an argument you disagree with as "emotional" undermines your own position.

When a company only hires white, able-bodied males aged 25-35 (for example) from a larger population that is diverse across sex, race, ability, and age, but those attributes have no correlation with job performance, then yes, there are problems - they're called sexism, racism, ableism, and ageism.

And companies in the US do have a duty, per anti-discrimination laws.

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