"Prove that you're not a witch" is a very old tactic - and it's the opposite of the modern standard of guilt.
One person says (essentially): "organization need to take systematic efforts to avoid bias in hiring".
The other person say (essentially): "you can't prove we're sexist, this is a witch hunt".
One person says, "We deliberately handle women with kid gloves. A under-qualified woman has a better chance than an under-qualified man."
A feminist activist responds, "But you still hire more men! Therefore, it's almost a given that you're biased against women in other ways. Fix it."
The original person says, "Wow. We just can't win with you people."
I simply said that bias can be invisible and it useful to have formal methods for catching it. I don't see myself as a "feminist activist" by any means.
I think the feminist activists who do sometimes uncritically toss around accusations of bias aren't really helping. But when I notice people reading my nuanced position and hallucinating a feminist rant, it increases my sympathies. It also doesn't speak well of people's abilities to see their biases (I wouldn't claim perfection for myself of course but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that).
Demanding that everyone has a formal method to correct biases only provable in statistics, really do go back to the "Prove that you're not a witch" argument a few comments ago. The exact same proof can be found against different color of skin, names and clothes. It can be found in parents who has more than one children. Statistical proven biases exist everywhere.
Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane.
Wouldn't a better approach be incorporating formal, rational methods into everyone's individual thought processes from the beginning? In other words, I believe adopting the overt rationality advocated by the likes of http://lesswrong.com/ would almost automatically correct a lot of societal problems caused by bias.
It can have some justifications where we know the bias exists. However, in this case we do not know it, so when people feel the onus of the proof put on them, they don't like it.
I'll point out that we could have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt.
This is a bit off-topic but I am fascinated about the exact reasons why some people react to conversations as if they have been accused of something. I think you might want to consider that nothing is useful is gained if you introduce the concept of "guilt" into a conversation where it is not needed.
I'll offer an example that has already been discussed on hundreds of blogs. You may recall in 2007 that John Kenzer interviewed Alex Payne? (I am sorry that the interview seems to be offline: http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twi... but it is in the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20070416091128/http://www.radical...) and Alex Payne offered some common sense observations about the difficulty of scaling Rails:
"Running on Rails has forced us to deal with scaling issues ... far sooner than I think we would on another framework. Once you hit a certain threshold of traffic, either you need to strip out all the costly neat stuff that Rails does for you ... or move the slow parts of your application out of Rails, or both."
You may recall that David Heinemeier Hansson's response was overheated and irrational. He said that Alex Payne was blaming Rails for all of the problems at Twitter. But Payne had never blamed Rails for anything, he merely talked about how they were struggling to make it scale.
(I am sorry to say that David's response appears to be offline now: http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html , and the Internet Archive doesn't have it: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://david.heinemeierhansson..... As a side note, let us all mourn how many important conversations get erased off the web.)
Many smart commentators pointed out that there was no need for David Heinemeier Hansson to introduce the concept of blame into that conversation. Alex Payne's words could have simply been taken as a constructive starting point for a larger conversation about how to scale Rails. But for some reason Hansson felt the need to frame the conversation in terms of accusations and guilt.
The same is true about this conversation, and your reaction. We can have a constructive conversation about increasing diversity in hiring without ever introducing the concept of guilt.
And yet, every time this subject comes up, someone feels the need to frame the whole thing in terms of accusations and guilt. The level of defensiveness on display is remarkable.
The concept of blame was implied with the comment (paraphrased) startup culture is bad for women. That is blaming language, even though the victim was general and the guilt lies with a vague notion of 'culture'.
If you want to avoid discussions of blame it helps to avoid judgmental language.
"$VAGUE_CULTURE is $NEGATIVE_WORD [for $VICTIMS]"
It's nice when people don't jump to conclusions and talk about guilt and blame when it hasn't been made 100% explicit, on the other hand it's also nice when ideas are followed through to logical conclusions rather than left hanging for others take personally.
If you don't want people talking about guilt then avoid judgmental language ("bad" in this case, "harm" in yours) until it's very clear that a judgment is necessary. Having an arm amputated in a car accident is "harm", it's "bad". Is not being hired for a position really "harm?" Maybe it is, but unlike bodily injury such a determination is not so trivial to make.
- The implication, stated or not (usually not), is that some people (i.e. white men) hold their jobs in tech because they took a position that rightfully should have gone to a more qualified person of a different group (i.e. woman / racial minority). With the attendant implication that they aren't actually competent and that they only got their position through in-group affiliation.
- Men (white or not) who have worked hard in their education and their profession to be able to work and succeed in tech feel frustrated when their efforts are downplayed or dismissed because they are alleged to be 'playing the game on easy mode'.
- People (male or female, of diverse races and backgrounds) who believe in the value of hard work and have actually seen such work pay off in their profession - i.e. who have experienced meritocracy in action - are frustrated by those who claim that a meritocracy (however imperfect) does not exist and that all tech hiring is biased by some sort of 'old boys network' (which is an insult to women who did well, without whinging, by their own efforts in intellectual labor and networking)
You missed the parent's point so entirely, it's as if you are an MRA bot posting the same old scripted comments no matter what actual discussion is taking place. He said that we could "have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt" and that we don't need to "frame the whole thing in terms of accusations" and your immediate knee-jerk response is to list all these imaginary accusations that are being "implied". Can you just keep an open mind and consider the possibility that, as the parent says, none of these accusations are actually being made? (If you don't find the parent comment convincing enough, perhaps look at your own "not usually stated" qualifier).
A good rule of thumb for when a conversation has become personal and emotions are getting involved is when the word "You" comes up. Conversations that stay on a strictly academic level talk about the ideas involved, not the people who espouse those ideas.
Except, here is what lkrubner said, emphasis mine:
The same is true about this conversation, and _your reaction_.
See how we were, in fact, having a thread where we all address each other personally? How you made up an arbitrary rule to discount my comment just because it made you uncomfortable?
Next time, check your own emotional state before jumping with with a lecture on someone else's. And try to argue on substance, not tone, please.
As in, no specific criticism of white men may be intended, but some white men may experience a "call for diversity" as criticism, since they are well known to be the largest individual group in the tech industry.
Not saying that they "should" feel that way, nor that they are right or wrong for feeling that way, just that many do, and here are some possible reasons why.