Comment by ArkanExplorer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArkanExplorer | Hacker News Reader

Same thing with job applications:

"In an attempt to increase workplace diversity, the Australian public service implemented a .. trial removing all mention of gender and ethnicity from applications.

It was found that removing gender from thousands of applications made women less likely to advance through the recruitment process compared to cases where gender was visible.

The trial found that a woman's name on an application made the candidate 2.9% more likely to get job interviews.

Leaders have now been told pause the trials"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

Its counter-productive to institute gender and diversity requirements at (tech) companies, where the core problem is at the fundamental immigration level.

For example, 74.5% of H1B migrants to the USA are from India, and 78.4% of them are male:

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...

If we instituted gender and equality quotas at the migration level - ie. maximum 10% of the total yearly intake from any one country, and maximum 49% males from any one country, then we would a create a much more diverse talent pipeline.

I think it’s worth noting that that finding is not universal, and other studies do find the opposite. My brief skim through Google scholar does seem to show a fairly divided field here.

http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%...

https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/19805/1/Cole%20et%20al.%2020...

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36436480/Gender_et_bia...

Those are from decades ago

The first link is from 2016. The only one that rises to “decades” ago is the last.

It's impossible to control for the culture of the organizations who are reviewing the applicants.

In the US, if you sent anonymized resumes to old, large companies in Industry X and then sent them to new, small companies in Industry Y, you are likely to get very different results.

Then your results become very dependent on how well you randomize those organizations, which is very difficult. If you get a few more "X" orgs instead of "Y" orgs, your results look totally different.

Hmm...

First study:

"Minorities may be particularly likely to experience disadvantage when they apply to ostensibly pro-diversity employers."

That doesn't quite fit the narrative. Also, the study examines the practice of "resume whitening" as something that some minority applicants (less than 50%, so a minority) do to combat their expectations of potential bias.

It does not say anything itself about whether such bias exists.

Second study:

"Male recruiters’ perceptions of applicants’ work experiences did not differ depending on applicant gender. However, female recruiters perceived male applicants’ resumes to re- port more work experiences than resumes of female applicants."

So female recruiters discriminate against females, male recruiters don't discriminate. Also doesn't fit the narrative.

Third link only got me an error message.

Anyway, I don't think any of these studies actually supports your assertion.

The first one might be because companies that make a big deal about being pro diversity have already identified a problem and are trying to combat it by making big deal (not necessarily by doing anything else), whereas normal companies don't need to advertise that because they already have a wide variety of employees.

Yes, in France there was a large scale "anonymous CV" experiment, and going against what was expected, made people from minorities or poor neighbourhoods more disadvantaged.

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2011/04/04/le-cv-anon...

Just shooting from the hip here, but isn't that expected because their CVs would be worse due to the current climate putting them at a disadvantage? My gut feeling is that you need to have that system in place for many years to even the playing field first. Starting with fresh graduates getting equal chances, and then slowly letting that effect build up year after year.

Yes, but a simplistic interpretation of meritocracy serves anti diversity narratives and feelings of victim hood.

Just shooting from the other hip, but isn't correcting for SES something that can easily be done in the study, and is commonly done?

Psychologist here, and yes this is commonly done in studies where you have access to that information. However these statistical controls are imperfect at best due to things like generational effects of education. E.g., first generation educated behaves differently from a long line of educated family members in ways that are sometimes hard to define and difficult to measure.

Well, from the article: "This result, which the researchers themselves describe as "unexpected", could be linked to the fact that the named CV allows the recruiter to be more sympathetic to shortcomings in the application letter ("gaps" in the curriculum, little experience)."

That shows two things: inequality is real, and some recruiters are actively trying to compensate for it, which has a positive effect overall.

The inequality problem is unfortunately a very tough nut to crack, that would require several decades of consistent policy, which is completely unattainable in the current political situation (with governments randomly changing policies every few years in a direction or another).

Nobody prevents Indian women to apply for H1B jobs in US.

> Its counter-productive to institute gender and diversity requirements at (tech) companies, where the core problem is at the fundamental immigration level.

I don't see anything counterproductive in blind recruitment. It's a normal practice, along with randomizing resume review in a few big companies in places like India, or China exactly because the issue of nepotism, bigotry, casteism, classism, and people slipping their university fraternity members into the company is so severe there.

> Nobody prevents Indian women to apply for H1B jobs in US

Not even perception in India?

Chinese and Indian cultures suppress female H1B applicants in systemic ways that the US can't influence even if it wanted to.

Do you have data on this as it relates specifically to H1B applications?

That's a ludicrous question.

Is it? The data in the original comment indicates that Chinese H1B applications are substantially more female heavy than most countries. So unless you're prepared to argue that Canada and the UK are "suppressing female H1B applicants in systemic ways" even more than China, or you have some other source of data indicating a bias, there has to be another explanation.

The story could plausibly be true if restricted to just India, although even then I think you've gotta confront the fact that the UK's gender balance is only marginally closer to 50/50.

Casteism in Cisco https://archive.is/YLVtE and in Oracle https://archive.is/XTZ5f

These type of studies were performed after years and years of efforts to push for a more diversified work force. I’d be interested if their is a way to do a comparison with years prior and see if and when a shift started happening.

Organizations hire for their needs, not to have exactly equal numbers of people across arbitrary metrics. The issue with "maximum 10% of the total yearly intake from any one country" is that it's a feel good statistic on paper, but it ends up having the real effect that it instantly puts top talent out of reach for US companies (all other things being equal, countries with more population will have more people of exceptional talent).

http://paulgraham.com/95.html

Funnily enough, there is more gender diversity in Indian tech companies (or local operations of US tech companies). See https://go.451research.com/women-in-tech-india-employment-tr...

It will get even more India focused because of the latest laws.

Which are? (non-american here so I don't know about your immigration system)

They removed the caps on green card applications be country (I think, I don’t know exactly either)

Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act - to eliminate the 7% per country-cap on green card applicants, among other things, which would have ended the painfully long wait for thousands of green card hopefuls.

Why does India get penalized if they generate 50% of the people interested in a tech H1B (they don't - it's a thought experiment). Why is 49% preferable to 30% or 51% or 70%? Why not split male and female applicants into two pools and hire accordingly? Meaning if you get 70% of your applicants from men, hire 70% male and 30% female. If the following year it's 60/40, hire 60/40.

Or better yet, fix the pipeline issues rather than put in arbitrary caps and quotas that serve only to reduce the overall quality of candidate pools.

no, we are need to allow people who have desiers to come here 4 good life n success, no filter for sex. in India IIT is 64% man, so you are only penalise unfair men by these action. we are needing to let almost any person who want to be in America to be here not have a nother restricting.

Are you sure about that 64% number? At my IIT, it was more a 6:1 ratio.

bad research on my part, i think i found result from american university first. here it is saying 8% woman: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/stor...

but point is same: if we are creating quota for female to imigrate that has unfair penalisation on men. we are ought to have admit almost any person who is desiring for to be here and working.

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