Is it a quota if I say a fair coin should yield heads at least 49% of the time? What about if I demand that a six-sided die have a normal distribution and not be weighted for cheating purposes?
In 2021 alone, over 100k people graduated with bachelor's degrees in computer science. That sample size is too small to approach general population demographics?
Okay, let's lower the bar. Why doesn't your staffing at least approximate the demographics of computer science graduates? Or even narrowing it further - let's say your startup needs the absolute best - people with PhDs in computer science? (According to the 2021 numbers, ~2500 people and 25% female)
You can argue over what the numbers should look like and how we should achieve those numbers but it's a cop-out to claim it's impossible or "too hard" due to a limited supply of hires.
Yes, because engineers don't follow general population demographics.
> In 2021 alone, over 100k people graduated with bachelor's degrees in computer science. That sample size is too small to approach general population demographics?
Yes. Again, that sample too does not follow population demographics.
> Okay, let's lower the bar. Why doesn't your staffing at least approximate the demographics of computer science graduates?
It does. Which is why I said "mostly" (but not exclusively) male. However that is not a "lowered bar", that is the only possible way things can work out. Unless you argue that a number of male engineers should be systematically doomed to never be hired in the name of equality, because otherwise we cannot reach your perfect demographic distribution.
92% of the 5840 occupational deaths in 2006 were men. Why isn't it closer to 50%?
If a large pool of people like "we have a thousand employees" has a demographic balance that is wildly different from gen pop you at least need a good explanation for how it got that way. There are plenty of ways to explain it, but it's unreasonable to just assume "it's fine, I'm sure nothing bad happened" on faith.
This is a control freak / bureaucrat / authoritarian dream. Endless work to keep up with ever moving targets, and since everyone will be out of compliance at various times it means it’s ripe for selective enforcement.
Also, do you believe that different cultures/groups of people may have different preferences? Is it crazy to think that may affect their career choices and preferences? Should the state then mandate them to enter a profession at a higher rate?
I said "wildly different" on purpose, we're not talking about "your workforce is 45% female instead of 47% female" here. It really is big differences - like if you pull up a MS diversity report they're around 30% female when the US population is ~50% female. This is a big discrepancy. You can come up with lots of plausible explanations but if you want to be believed, shouldn't you have a little data? Or should we just shrug off the potential of massive inequality because it doesn't personally affect us as far as we know?
What I see is a lot of people terrified of simply releasing the data because the data will look, in many cases, very bad. I think if people want to advocate against any sort of intervention - perfectly reasonable to not want intervention - they should be able to support their case with data.
Generals get promoted for having more women or people of color promoted under their command. When the casualty reports come in and white men are dying on the battlefield as disproportionate rate, double their demographics do we have generals saying "your race and gender distribution should at least vaguely resemble that of the general population" so we aren't going to send white men on the front lines anymore, we're going to get some diverse front line soldiers until our casualty rates look like America?
In which case, yeah? Gender bias in medicine has proven negative effects both for patients and physicians. If we do everything right to knock down barriers, we should eventually see more male nurses and more male teachers. Why shouldn't we? What's wrong with a man being a nurse?
Men live shorter lives than women do that must mean there’s systemic discrimination against men.