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Comment by bitops | Hacker News Reader

> What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.

There is no easy way to fix it, but there is a way to fix it. I won't go so far as to say that it's obvious to many people.

The way to do it? Work to change men's attitudes and biases towards women. It can definitely be done, but it takes hard work and cultural change.

I would recommend the book "The Macho Paradox" by Jackson Katz for anyone interested in the topic of gender discrimination. Jackson writes well, he's a man, and he brings a mans perspective to the issues. There is no demonization or undue blame assigned to men in the book. It's a powerful read.

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Why you need to change MEN attitudes?

Most HR departments are staffed by women for example, they would be the ones that saw a "Mr." in the resume.

Female bosses discriminate worse against women than male bosses. The causes to this is debated, through if we want a change, we do indeed need to change people rather than men.

That sounds interesting. Have any sources? I'd like to read up about this.

I could not find the source, nor the original news article that I read.

But while looking, I instead found research that slightly contradicted my current understanding of the subject. They[1,2] claimed that there is no difference between female and male management in how they discriminate. They say that both genders are equally bad in creating equality in the work space (deciding hiring or pay rate).

So I still stand by that we need to change people rather than men, but thanks for pushing me to look for sources.

[1]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...

[2]: http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2011/r-11-26-Paverkar-chefe... (Swedish)

Of course you need men to change their attitudes - the majority of people at the top of the food chain are male, and they’re the ones that make the hiring decisions.

But you are right - it’s not an exclusively male problem, and woman are perfectly capable of discriminating against other women, and do, frequently, and often unconsciously.

In the end society as a whole needs to change how it views women, and how it acts upon those views.

When you got your resume thrown out because you have a female sounding name, it has NOTHING to do with higher ups, whoever threw the resume out was HR, and thus very probably a woman.

A problem might exist, but targeting the wrong target won't fix it, stop blaming the "higher ups" for decisions (conscious or not) taken by the ones that took those decisions.

I very much doubt there is a company where the CEO made a explicit rule for the HR don't hire any women.

Or the resume wasn't thrown out by the HR person. It was passed along to the department hiring manager, which is what actually happens 100% of the times where the resume fits the job description, and it was the department hiring manager who then threw it out.

But I can see your point, let's just assume it was the HR person that threw out the resume. And since we're in assumption land, let's assume the HR person was a woman.

> Why you need to change MEN attitudes?

Because men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business, esp. in the highest levels of business/corporate hierarchy.

Of course, combating misogyny and patriarchy doesn't mean only men will have attitudes changed, but let's not pretend about the numbers of the situation.

>men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business

This is the problem, not (only) men's attitudes. The most screwed up part is that this inequality often holds even in female dominated professions, like librarians and teachers. I'm into forcing companies to do things rather than waiting for the attitudes of millions to change, esp. when the effect of that attitude only increases the income and options of the people whose attitudes you are trying to change.

Institute quotas and penalize companies if they don't make them. In the beginning, companies may have to hire women that are less talented than the men that are available to them, but if the positions are there, women in general will up their games to compete with each other for them. It's basic economics.

I have a better idea. Instead of forcing companies to change using an incompeteny bureaucracy, invest in operations that commit to gender-blind hiring practices, and get rich when those companies hire better people and are vastly more successful.

> Most HR departments are staffed by women for example

Do you see the irony in this statement?

He's stating fact. The HR industry is absolutely dominated by females. That's not a matter of opinion.

Human resources people are the ones who negotiate on behalf of the company to get cheap health insurance. They aren't hiring managers.

They nearly always perform the initial sorting of resumes. People in charge of departments or groups (who are usually the ones hiring) are often too busy to sort through 400 resumes.

Even at lower levels. I managed a team of 4 people at Yahoo, and whenever I was replacing someone, we'd send a spec to HR, negotiate a pay grade target to fit the department budget, and wait for the resumes, who'd first been sorted by external recruiters, then been further filtered by internal HR before they landed in my inbox.

This was true even when I managed hiring at a company of 50 people or so. At companies smaller than that, I've usually been the one to have a first look at resumes for my team.

That's an incredibly uninformed opinion you've got there Thomas!

HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager. The majority also conduct the phone interview and occasionally the first face to face interview.

Finally, who do you think hires other HR staff? So, yes. Human resource people are hiring managers. More so than most.

I would hesitate to call tom uninformed.

HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager

From my experience (longer than tptacek's) there are BFE (big freaking enterprises) that use HR to screen, but in every one of those, if an external applicant could find a hiring manager, HR reduced to a pro-forma deal.

Even at the executive hiring level, if HR is meaningfully involved, it is with a specialist hired to do nothing but that.

As a "first line of defence" they are the opposite of qualified. External candidates and internal hiring managers find ways around them if they are at all involved. Otherwise, the result is not filled with qualified folks.

I've never worked for a company in which HR had any real influence over selection, but then, I've mostly worked for startups.

We have HR. They don't screen.

I might suggest ratcheting back "incredibly uninformed".

I stand by my statement. I have nothing but respect for your obvious and substantial success but as you say yourself, you've mostly worked for startups. Whilst you're clearly more informed than most on all things tech & startups, in this one particular area, you're point is clearly ill-informed.

The vast majority of established organisations with 100+ staff have a HR department and in Europe, the HR department usually screens CV's and are regularly involved in phone screening and/or first stage interviews.

woosh

I'm going to leave this here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf

Relevant data, for those not reading, though I suggest it.

  Role                              % Women
  ================================  =======
  Human Resource Managers           72.7
  Human Resource Workers            71.8
  Human resources assistants [...]  82.7

Human Resources Managers 72.7% women

Human Resources Workers 71.8% women

Human Resources Assistants 82.7% women

If one notes that a joke is fact, it does not imply they didn't understand the joke.

It does imply they didn't understand the joke.

It does not mean that the implication is true.

What, that women often discriminate against women? That's ironic but also true. Or maybe that men discriminate against HR departments... not sure that's true but at least it's funny :)

There must be an awful lot of anti-male sexism in HR departments to keep the percentage of men so low.

You do realize that HR doesn't actually hire people (except for HR roles of course), department managers make the hiring decisions. HR is there to support the process.

HR does pre-selection -- this is exactly when unwanted CVs go to the waste basket.

Yep, anyone who does not know this generally doesnt get how much the HR idiots can prescreen wonderful candidates because they didnt match the keywords.

It doesn't address the real gender discrimination issues, but having gender-balanced HR departments could have helped Kim O'Grady. Currently, if you include your photo in your resume, being a beautiful (rather than average-looking) woman seems to lower your chance of getting an interview [1].

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21551535

Having a culture in which it was normal to post resumes with photographs would also have benefited Kim O Grady...

Either way, HR didn't hate him because he was beautiful, and there are conceivable reasons why even a gender balanced HR department might screen out candidates posting their "beautiful" photos along with an applicatiom that don't involve petty jealously.

If photos are relatively rare in a culture receiving applications or the photos used are glamorous model applications, one could even argue that it's a reasonable alarm about a person's willingness to nakedly milk their looks. Even if that isn't the case, a non-partisan observer might [over]correct a perceived (and often real) tendency for beautiful people to receive more favourable treatment in some environments. Maybe they could apply the same criteria to tall men too...

photos aren't terribly relevant now, since you can just google the person's name and find a pic of them in most cases

We have to change everyone's attitudes, sure. Internalized sexism is a real thing.

There is an implicit big assumption there, that HR actually determines who is screened in and/or hired. It's typically the hiring manager who does.

"The way to do it? Work to change men's attitudes and biases towards women. It can definitely be done"

Are you suggesting that as a hobby, a career, or?

Who has the time or inclination to do that?

"It can definitely be done"

As a practical matter I would personally worry more about other things than spending time reversing established thought process and bias.

Now of course if someone wants to start a movement or a non-profit toward this cause (and somehow be able to earn a living from that) that's fine. Or if they decide this is a cause they believe in and instead of spending leisure time on something else that's fine as well.

I'm suggesting that it be a focus in life - if it's one of your core values and you care about it, you'll naturally take the time and energy to work against it.

For example, many people on HN care about privacy and government intrusion. They don't need to be convinced as to why it's important to speak up about the NSA and the US treatment of Edward Snowden. People who care feel it's a personal imperative, so they do something about it.

I personally have the time and the inclination. Because it's something I care about. Maybe you don't care about it, that's your personal feeling, so you won't take the time. But I'm sure that there are other things in your life that you care about, and you do invest time in those things.

It's absolutely fine not to care about every social cause out there. I don't think we can expect everyone to care about everything. Just pick those things which matter most to you and work to do something about them.

As for a movement, there are a few out there that I'm aware of - in particular I am a big fan of the work of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP).

"It's absolutely fine not to care about every social cause out there."

I'm impressed with your reply and the way it is phrased. Not typical for HN (and other places) where you can and do get jumped on because people feel differently or feel you have to care about what they care about or what a crowd thinks is important. Very well put.

"But I'm sure that there are other things in your life"

This really is one of my core problems with people judging. They don't know the complete picture and focus on one vary small thing and make their judgement from that.

For example maybe someone doesn't like recyling (and never recycles) but is free with their time and help in another area that has much greater personal and societal benefits.

You know that your post itself is a bit of work to change people's attitudes, right?

People spend a lot of time communicating. Mutual teaching (gossip, storytelling, etc) is the core of human society.

One of the things which stuck with me from my social psychology class in college was a comparison of gender discrimination in hiring practices comparing male interviewers with female interviewers. The take away was that female interviewers were more likely than male interviewers to end up with sexist hiring results. Their were a number of possible justifications given, such as that the women interviewers felt threatened by having another women take their job (they felt like a "token" member of a team), a sort of stereotype threat where the female interviewer held female interviewers to a higher standard (they didn't want to "confirm" negative stereotypes about women), ect.

I will try to find the citation.

> women interviewers felt threatened by having another women take their job

my anegdotal evidence is most women I knew found female peers a pain in the ass and explicitely admitted they in general prefer to work with men.

However, those biases come in part from our experience. People subconsciously assume that a woman won't make a good engineer (for example), because when they picture the engineers that they've met, the overwhelming majority are male. So to change those attitudes, one of the things you need is to make the numbers more balanced.

Thanks, I've been looking for reading on this topic.

(Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent is also excellent - one woman's experiences disguised as a man. Sounds potentially lightweight or biased, is neither.)

A more immediate fix for HR departments might involve a two step process for selecting candidates.

The first step is to get the candidates CV and work history, and then re-enter that information into a generic form. Only crucial information should be entered in this step, leave out the candidates gender, marital status, age, the name of their school(s), the names of previous employers, etc. The second step is to pass this "sanitized" information on to someone else to make the actual decision as to whether or not the candidate should be interviewed.

The two step process is repeated in the interview process. Only objective information is taken down by the interviewer, and again this is passed on to someone else, who can make a value judgement about the candidate without their judgement being colored by the candidates gender, race, looks, height, perfume or whatever else is considered to be extraneous information.

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