Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions | Hacker News Reader

Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions

news.cornell.edu

119 pointsokasaki138 comments

"Impact of gender on career prospects

According to the survey, male students were more likely than female students to feel that their gender will hold them back in academia. The proportion of men who said they were very disadvantaged in their academic career because of their gender ranged from 77% to 91% across the countries surveyed, compared with 36% to 61% of women."

From "Major survey of PhD students in Europe sheds light on working life", http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/10/04/major-survey-o...

Not surprising to me. I've participated in admissions committees (for a graduate program) and hiring committees (for new faculty) at a top US STEM program, and women do get a significant boost. This preference is usually explicit -- to look for "diversity hires", and so forth.

The widely unacknowledged paradox is that eradication of sexism will actually increase occupational gender imbalances.

Gender equality and national wealth will lead people to choose careers that most appeal to them. The likely truth is that most women would rather work as nurses and teachers than as programmers and engineers.

Equal opportunity causes unequal results.

Until we accept this, we'll waste most of our time fighting shadows instead of actual sexism.

Remember the stackoverflow poll results that came up last week? One of the interesting stats I saw was that the highest percentage of women in programming came from India, at 15%. The lowest percentage was from Sweden at 2%.

There was a Reddit discussion on why it seemed that countries with higher gender equality yielded less female software engineers. Personally, I think it makes sense; it seems that given more career options, women generally may prefer other fields over software. I dont think there is anything sexist about that observation (I would choose professional footballer over engineer).

As an anecdote, I once had a round-table style english class in college where most of the 20 students in the class were social-justice type folks, (bunch of Gryffindors). The topic of gender inequality in STEM came up, and some of the ladies were complaining about underrepresented women. I found it ironic that all of the ladies in the class were English, Sociology, or Psychology. None had interests in engineering ("oh, it's not for me"), but they still thought there should be more women because it conformed to some imaginary principle of equality. I think that's stupid.

A stack overflow poll isn't a reliable source of data about enginners, fwiw.

> The likely truth is that most women would rather work as nurses and teachers than as programmers and engineers.

How could you possibly know this? Even if this is true in today's society, there's no way to know whether or not it would be true in a counterfactual society where gender equality exists.

There are actually studies on this. It turns out that the more egalitarian and more wealthy a society, the more unequal the outcomes[1].

Talked about in "Brainwash", a Norwegian documentary[2].

[1] http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&uid=2007...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

You could study human behavior in as many different cultures as possible to discover universalities, or study children before they are influenced by culture.

Both of which have been done extensively.

So conversely, you can't argue the opposite, i.e. that gender equality would lead to women making identical career choices as men.

Nope, you're right. I can't argue the opposite and I'm not. I'm just sick of all the generalizations that get made on HN with no evidence or supporting data.

I think the natural tendency for most women to care for other people is determined by their usually higher level of oxytocin than men...

EDIT: the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone

I think this an example of the overly-simplistic logic that kept women from voting. It still happens today, CNN pulled a sexist story that attempted to link women's ovulation with the way they would vote. http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/25/after-reader-backlash-cnn-...

Many suffragettes used the same kind of logic, but to argue the other end of the issue. When women were agitating for the vote, in many cases their rationale was that women brought a different perspective and set of sensibilities than that of men. Some even argued that women were more moral.

I am not talking about suffrage, but in a usual scenario a woman has "higher level of progesterone" than man is a _fact_, isn't it?

EDIT: the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone

My understanding was that you were trying to draw a causal relationship between levels of progesterone in a person's bloodstream and their tendency to care for other people. Further, I understood you to state that women have higher levels of progesterone in their system and, thusly, care more for others.

It's the causal relationship between progesterone levels and how much people care for others that I find repugnant. It's reductive and simplistic and, I might add, entirely untrue. I do not believe that a side effect of progesterone ingestion is "increased caring for others".

but a higher level of oxytocin in a mother's body is directly related to the survival chance of the mother's immediate offspring -- this is not a _casual_ relationship, correct?

EDIT 1: sorry if my comment makes you feel repugnant...my original intention is just to state what I think as fact per the issue in question...

EDIT 2: my mistake...the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone...but still, woman usually has higher level of oxytocin than man...

This desperately needs some kind of sourcing. In my opinion it is way too over-the-top to take seriously without some factual backing.

Personally, it sounds like sexist male wish fulfillment and I will be very surprised if there is any factual basis for this idea.

Yes, the result is surprising to say the least, but it is apparently well-researched, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374516

I think one explanation for the data is that in less affluent societies, there is more economic pressure for women to go into fields that do not match their preferences.

Sadly somewhere along the line Gender Balance became the same as Gender Equality. While it is easy to measure it is a foolish metric since it presumes women and men are the same. The sooner we realize that "equal but different" is OK the sooner we can address the real issues.

I agree.

What's the point of fighting all the time for gender equality without knowing what it really means of "gender equality"?

I mean, "gender equality" (or any other type of equality) is not correct and just by itself, and might not be manifested only through equal numbers of both gender representations...Gender equality might have some asymmetric effects to many other facades of the society...But what are those effects and how they matter?

Sure, equality would be comforting to everyone's intuitive feeling, but we need to get this world work in a better way than those personal intuitive feeling alone in the end...

You're right, but feminism (and leftism in general) is guided by Social Marxism and Critical Theory and those are tools being used to divide and conquer the people. So it won't stop.

But yes you're right, look at Sweden with their +70% female nurses and +70% male engineers in university. Also watch Hjarnevask to have an idea of the strength of the hallucination and reality-denial that SM and CT provoke on people. Also watch how many HNers will instantly downvote this upon reading it because it provokes cognitive dissonance on them (hence the lack of arguments).

What? Nobody accepts that because the trends of the last half century or so contraindicate your comment.

I looked this up, it's called "gender essentialism". Here's an article on gender segregation from Wikipedia that mentions this idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_segregation

This is just another way to make the gender discrimination we see today seem acceptable. There's no scientific basis for this idea, it's strikes me as clearly backward.

“Efforts to combat formerly widespread sexism in hiring appear to have succeeded,”

Interesting conclusion.

It depends what is meant by the word "sexism", which to the public usually means something like "discrimination based on sex", but to those in the know refers to some putative destructive ideology, or even "absence of sufficiently favorable conditions for women". Hence their use of peculiar monikers such as "reverse sexism" to mean discrimination against men, rather than simply "sexism".

An illustrative example of this attitude is in the UN's Gender Inequality Index, where, in factors in which women are advantaged (such as lifespan), larger gaps push the figure down rather than up (so larger gaps are considered as more "equal" in those areas that already favor women).

Much like racism, sexism appears to only go one way in the mainstream media

Where are the protests? The marches? Were any buildings burned down?

we'd need to do that ... and we should!

(not burning buildings, though =P)

I gather you are claiming that there is sexism but in the other direction?

I disagree, strongly.

"female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, yet when they do they are more likely to be hired"

These two statements are strongly connected. Women with equivalent qualifications are not applying for the same jobs that men are.

I suggest this is because female candidates are self-selecting themselves out of positions they are less suitable for, but equivalent male candidates are applying anyway.

As such, male candidates must be selected out by the hiring committee instead (where they will contribute even more to these statistics by applying elsewhere).

It's not evident to me that women are being treated equally here, even leaving aside their disadvantage from historical sexist practices.

From the paper:

> In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children).

The effect you are proposing, even if true, does not apply to the result in the article.

Yes, it still applies.

If I know that women are typically more realistic in assessing their own skills (including skills outside of qualifications), and given no access to other information or investigation, I should prefer to hire the woman who looks the same on paper.

I believe this to be an objective argument based in probability theory.

Which would be bias. You have merely given a justification for that bias.

I understand why you think that but I don't agree. I made a clear argument that there was no bias here - this is a sensible, rational practice on the part of employers.

Besides, this is "news" for a reason - nobody would be shocked if the result was in the other direction, because that would be normal and expected in a lot of society.

There should be more examples like this, in this direction, because it represents a minimal counterbalance to all the thousands of advantages that men have in STEM/skilled jobs.

>There should be more examples like this, in this direction, because it represents a minimal counterbalance to all the thousands of advantages that men have in STEM/skilled jobs.

"Yes, it's bias, but it's for a good cause!"

No, the applicants in the study had the same qualifications.

It's been an ambition of mine to work in some certain tech companies that are notoriously difficult to get into. The type of job I am going for I am easily capable of doing. While i'm working hard to better myself the thought hasnt escaped me that if I was a woman who had the same experience and qualifications that I have I would have a far better chance of getting the position. This is the definition of sexism.

It is sexism, and it's unfortunate. I'm a woman, and I pretend to be a man online so my comments and understandings of computer science, code, programming, and mathematics are treated with the same respect, and given the same kind of responses and feedback.

I've tried numerous times to out myself as female and it's clear that there is consistently a difference in the way I'm spoken to as a woman and as a man.

I will probably move onto another alias as I typically do, but I think it is necessary to point out that both genders suffer due to any kind of discrimination. I feel like people hold me back by judging my abilities by my gender. I get angry thinking about how much more I might have been able to learn if I was a man, and I resolve that with studying independently, and fighting in whatever way I can to make sure I can gain the same knowledge base as anyone else should be able to.

One of the few things I am proud of is that I have managed to cultivate an online personality image that is often mistaken for an older man. I don't know when I will stop believing that I am inferior at the things I've spent my entire life studying, but I hope I will soon, because it is extremely depressing. I don't know what my experiences are the definition of, because I know they are biased by an extremely limited set of data.

The point is, I guess - keep your eyes on what really matters to you, and always keep that goal in sight. It's very easy to turn a superficial cultural assumption that actually doesn't happen that often, into a self defeatist attitude, and all that attitude does is get in your way of achieving.

Forgive me, but I don't think you'd have gained much more understanding of systems.

this industry, if you're not born in the right geographical location is a complete impossibility unless you are an autodidact.

Personally growing up where I was there was 0 incentive to work in computers- no courses, even anything bearing on technical was cut due to lack of interest. So I taught myself. I find that this is probably the best way to learn.

You might have been held back due to gender- I can't possibly know. But I wouldn't consider it a bad thing, probably the extra fight taught you to appreciate what you were learning in the first place.

on the flip side, I resonate with the top commenter- had I been born a woman I do feel I'd have more chances of getting a job in some hard to access companies (whether that's true or not is completely debatable of course). Even though I'm sure there are people who condescend [you] outside of [your] career.. at least online you can mask [your] gender (sad that you'd have to but bigots be bigots), but I cannot become a woman for a job interview.

You don't have to become a woman unless you want to become a woman. I don't have to work for idiots, and neither do you.

I think any form of prejudice hinders your ability to think regardless. They can't see existence the same because they've already molded a language, a way of reasoning, and a way of thinking around an axiom of absolute certainty (that they pretend doesn't exist, because it's a bias they do not consciously act on, but it exists as an invariant in the mind regardless). It is ridiculous, counter intuitive, cognitively dissonant logic.

> in this industry, if you're not born in the right geographical location is a complete impossibility unless you are an autodidact.

Most of what is fundamentally mentally shaping and necessarily important for your ability to think as a human being is not dependent on education, but on everything, and I don't know whether I have control over it or not, but I don't begin with the premise assuming that I already know everything I am going to know.

> But I wouldn't consider it a bad thing

You wouldn't consider gender discrimination against women a bad thing?

Why don't you apply the same logic to the parent's comment, and consider it a good thing that he has to work harder to get the job he wants? Probably the extra fight will teach him to appreciate the job even more. Or something.

excuse me.. from what did I say that made it sound like I said gender discrimination is "not a bad thing".

that's quite inflammatory and it's quite upsetting.

What I actually said was; "it's good that you educated yourself because self education is much better than formal education in this industry"

I received the same amount of encouragement as the Parent. Zero, none, my mother thought it was stupid- no father, and no education system for 25 miles that would educate me on this.

And from what I've learned in nearly 10 years in industry; Self education beats formal education when formal education doesn't work hard to learn.

k? now, please, in future read the comment properly, parse what is actually being said instead of throwing accusations and insults at people.

You might not have intended or meant to say that, but I parse

"You might have been held back due to gender- I can't possibly know. But I wouldn't consider it a bad thing, probably the extra fight taught you to appreciate what you were learning in the first place."

the same way as your parent comment. Just a heads-up.

The web is a poor reflection of how you well you will be treated by people in general, the relative anonymity has a profoundly negative effect on peoples behaviour.

I can understand how negativity or strong criticism whether warranted or not can have a measurable effect on ones well being away from the internet; I have felt it too with a very limited online presence.

I actually find myself more often than not shying away from interaction on the internet in at least partly because of that possible negativity, while some may disagree I believe it is better for me personally and professionally; I would hazard a guess that online discussions bring limited return in terms of career development.

I do believe in the power of networking, the door opened to my two most recent opportunities via associations, but none of those were cultivated online.

Hey, I noticed you got downvoted and I'm not particularly sure why.

Could people respond when they downvote?

Have we woken a feminist movement or is there something in his comment that I'm missing?

    how much more I might have been able to learn if I was a 
    man, and I resolve that with studying independently

I find this such a strange statement because your solution ("studying independently") is exactly what every engineer (male or female) including myself does. I don't know a single accomplished engineer that is excellent at computer science, software engineering and programming for any reason than independent study.

Yes, there is occasional mentorship and asking questions, but those merely help with orientation corrections that help improve the efficacy of independent study. The journey to success in our field is essentially a solitary one. Hours of independent study relative greatly dwarves learning from others by several orders of magnitude.

I've had two mentors and mentored many others. The way I attracted mentorship had nothing to do with my gender and everything to do with my actions and how I asked questions. The first mentor I had came by way of noticing the book I was reading "The Little Schemer". The second mentor (and a current co-worker of mine) came from reading lots of his source code and submitting pull requests. Those I've mentored has been the result of their gumption. They just asked for help and advice and I gave it to them. My continued mentorship was dependent on two criteria: (1) the person needs to demonstrate that they will help themselves (including asking questions the smart way); and (2) be committed to independent self-study and practice.

    fighting in whatever way I can to make sure I can gain the 
    same knowledge base as anyone else should be able to.

What knowledge base exists out there that is in anyway exclusive to one demographic? I started learning to program in the mid-90s. Back then an argument could be made that knowledge was locked away and privvy to only a few. Mostly it was a problem of discoverability. You didn't know what resources were good ones to learn from so if you were lucky you'd know one enlightened engineer who could recommend the resources they considered to be effective instead of whatever "Learn X in 24 hours" crap on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble.

There days there is no shortage of suggested self study lists and reviews from Amazon, blogs and sites like HN. There's IRC. There's oodles and oodles of code on Github to read. There's koans. There's Project Euler. There are interactive language tutorials like the official one for Golang of 4clojure. There are interactive books like Marijn Haverbeke's Eloquent JavaScript. There's the whole series of "Learn X the Hard Way" started by Zed Shaw. There has never in history been such an abundance of accessible content to learn programming and there are no filters out there on any of this knowledge that prevents a self-directed learner from acquiring any knowledge they might desire. I'm actually jealous of the 10-12 year olds growing up today. Insofar as knowledge is concerned, any kid today with a computer and internet has a level of privilege relative to my 10-12 year self in the mid-90s that dwarves many times over any kind of privilege people complain about today.

Seriously, in 2015 and beyond the only thing that can keep anyone away from all this knowledge is not having internet access and a computer. That's a poverty issue that I would love to see solved because I think Internet access and access to computers should be a basic human right since it's essential for participation in much of the economy today.

certain tech companies

Other than Stanford, the Venn diagram of tech companies and US educational institutions has little overlap. The applicability of the study's conclusion to normal commercial concerns is dubious.

A few suggestions to put yourself on an even playing field with women.

* Focus your job search on assistant professor positions at universities rather than notoriously selective tech companies.

* Make it understood that you may need at least three months of paternity leave should you become a parent.

* Reduce your salary requirement to about 80 cents on the dollar.

if you remove the last point you'll have an argument.

but the gender gap has been widely and publicly disproved, females in the same industry as men tend to earn -more- money than their male brethren.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga...

I hope you have better citations for the gender gap being disproved than a HuffPost op-ed by someone from the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023035327045794837...

http://mises.org/library/what%E2%80%99s-behind-gender-wage-g...

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/time-to-ditch-t...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete...

http://theconversation.com/defending-the-indefensible-myths-...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-do...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/04/16/its-time-tha...

http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/08/debunking-the-myth-of-a-myt...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-...

http://blog.independent.org/2015/04/07/the-gender-wage-gap-a...

I'm not being a prick, but I picked the first article that appeared on google.. there are many more and, like I said.. it's -widely- disproven.

I can't reply to the posters below, a scientific paper, sure: http://www.pezzottaitejournals.net/index.php/IJOBMP/article/...

A bunch of uncited op-ed pieces (at least one from the same HuffPost/AEI author) is not the same as proof. You've demonstrated only that it's widely disputed by a bunch of op-eds (which you can also say about climate change, evolution, and the round-Earth theory). Going through the list:

Opinion. Mises.org lol. Opinion (and UK). Opinion. "Statistics are wrong". AEI opinion. Opinion. Not sure why you included the billmoyers.com piece, it argues the gap exists. Opinion. Opinion.

There is a lot of misinformation about this.

I believe it is on purpose for political reasons.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-77-cent-exaggeration...

> I can't reply to the posters below, a scientific paper, sure: http://www.pezzottaitejournals.net/index.php/IJOBMP/article/....

You're digging your hole deeper here. C'mon, we're not talking about income disparity in India. That study has a 200 person sample size in two Indian states.

From one of the articles you cited:

Every year on Equal Pay Day, while some Americans lament the fact that in 2014 women still earn around 20 percent less than men, others perform intellectual gymnastics to deny that a gender pay gap exists, or to blame women themselves — and the “choices” they make — for its persistence.

...

As Pamela Coukos, a senior program advisor at the Department of Labor, wrote in 2012, “studies consistently conclude that discrimination is the best explanation of the remaining difference in pay.”

Pamela Coukos, June 7, 2012 has also said "Economists generally attribute about 40% of the pay gap to discrimination – making about 60% explained by differences between workers or their jobs"

Personally, It sounds like she's being a bit disingenuous.

So if a woman is hired instead of you it means the company is being sexist towards you, not that perhaps she was better than you? How isn't the irony smacking you in the face?

put your gender as woman. if they retract their offer when they find out, sue for discrimination.

Trying to sue because they found out you falsified your application is going to be something of an uphill battle.

Good idea, but it doesn't really work in academia. When I applied for academic jobs, every offer I got was from someone who knew either me or my adviser. As far as I know this is the typical situation.

Given the underrepresentation of women in tech I think I'm ok with them being chosen over satisfying your ambitions.

Also working hard to better yourself is a continuous process and it doesn't stop when you get hired at BigCorp, continue doing so and you'll get results no matter your gender.

>>Given the underrepresentation of women in tech I think I'm ok with them being chosen over satisfying your ambitions.

This sounds like Affirmative-action; while having good intentions did not work out quite like they hoped. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action , search for the word "Negative".

Also, I wouldn't want my coworkers thinking I only got the job because I'm a black male. Even I myself don't like the idea that I might have gotten something only because someone else saw me as a charity case or I'm just the "token black guy" so the company can prove "See? We got a black guy! We're cool & hip now!" Replace "black male" with "woman" and I still believe my statement is true for most people.

Sharing a personal anecdote:

I'm somebody who was part of this affirmative action population. I come from the poorest country in Europe called Moldova, the unemployment is high, education low, your typical eastern-european anti-intelectual culture, you get the idea.. Anyway.. when I was 15 I got a scholarship in Romania because there were quotas for us 'moldavians'. At the time Romania was not much better off than Moldova, but certainly when it comes to math and CS to me at least it looked years ahead of the programs we had in Moldova! So I packed my bags and left for a much better education and what I would say now without reservation: a better life. Looking back I think I was very lucky to have gotten the education and exposure to an environment with great teachers/programmers. Maybe I could have succeeded in Moldova, who knows.. It's possible I suppose, but unlikely.

People who don't think you deserve a job will find a reason, any reason for their belief, even if you are the smartest person in the room, you will always be the "token black guy" for a significant percentage of people with or without an affirmative action programme.

And counter to your point, if you read the article, you'll find that affirmative action programmes have been very successful in improving participation rates and shrinking the wage gaps. Not to the point of equity, but an improvement. (Sidenote: if you search for Positive, you'll find twice as many as Negative)

Thomas Sowell--who is proposes several of the arguments against affirmative action in the wikipedia article-- is extremely intelligent, but if you follow his work you'll see that he's incapable of supporting anything that goes against the idea of ideologically pure free market systems.

Ok. I see your point. Positive discrimination is harmful, but I think it only applies when it's abused. From my vantage point I don't think we are there.

Do you think that any amount of positive discrimination is harmful for a given population?

Ask someone anywhere in the lower-middle range who's sent a kid (moreso boy than girl) to college recently how they feel about whether we're there or not.

I'm pretty sure a homogenous group of males with the same ethnicity will almost exclusively hire more males that "fit with their culture" and can "quickly get up to speed with the rest of their team".

I'm interested in hearing alternatives to an "affirmative action like" approach that would be effective.

>Given the underrepresentation of women in tech I think I'm ok with them being chosen over satisfying your ambitions.

There is so much wrong with this. You do no justice to anyone when you discount merit in the pursuit of ham-handed ratios.

Agreed. A company that hires no women will likely be at a disadvantage to the competition. Hiring diversely is an asset. While I'd like to fast-forward to a time where gender is in fact equal in most things, I think a much better way to start is to remove gender, race, etc. from college and work applications altogether.

What would happen if we let merit and drive determine outcomes above all other things? Maybe there are caveats I'm not considering.

More likely than not people start yelling loudly about who's advertising their skills better.

In the end not enough businesses and institutions are equipped to accurately assess skill. So rather than being hired based on skill, what you'd really be hired based on is perceived skill.

The people who can sell themselves and spin their skills will continue to thrive, the people who can't but have skills will find niches to do their work, and the people who don't have either will complain that the first two groups are being "pushy" or have an unfair advantage because they're selling themselves better.

Something like that.

Edit: even if we could measure skill... how? I don't suspect it's always an objectively measurable thing. e.g. most people who seek out psychiatric help want to find someone who is good fit for them and they can trust and talk to, not the "state's top ranked psychiatrist" (who is inherently intimidating).

Here is a relevant paper for this:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 (1997)

Essentially, they found that switching to blind auditing for orchestra musician positions raised the ratio of women hired severalfold. Thus, people' skill is (was?) rated lower if it is known they are female.

"I think a much better way to start is to remove gender, race, etc. from college and work applications altogether."

There's such a thing as interviews, though.

What happened to hiring people based on merit?

There are folks of certain political persuasions that would suggest that you are ignorant of the struggle and your white privilege is manifesting itself. This is exactly why I don't understand the "we need a woman president" malarkey. No, we need competent people regardless of their color or genatalia. This idea that we 'need' more this or more that is actually sexist and/or racist by definition.

Something like this became a bit of a meme.

http://geekfeminism.org/2009/11/29/questioning-the-merit-of-...

In my opinion, it's not as easy as it sounds. We all have biases and prejudices, some that we are aware of and some that we don't even notice.

Personally, I think you need a pretty mixed group of people in charge of hiring in order to get anywhere near to a fair and balanced process. It's too easy to discount racist or sexist hiring practices (either subconcious or overt) under the guise of wanting people who "fit with the team's culture".

You might as well ask 'what happened to bigfoot'.

When has this ever happened in reality? Every other week I see a HN link about how hard it is to actually identify talent and how companies continue to screw it up (hence: hire slow, fire fast). Many hires (especially of A peoople) tend happen on the basis of personal networks as well.

While merit plays a role, pretending that before affirmative action hiring was merit-based is naive at best.

Given this, I'd like you to please consider that the perception that a specific gender or race is worse at tech may be a bigger influence in an interview than the objective merit or lack thereof that candidate has (something that's impossible to measure in knowledge-work anyways).

It became bad PR.

LinkedIn exists because hiring people on merit doesn't exist.

Systemic biases complicate the assessment of merit.

Given the underrepresentation of women in tech I think I'm ok with them being chosen over satisfying your ambitions.

What's this supposed to mean? Is this some sort of reverse sexism? Reparation in kind for the gentle sex?

Perhaps the poster was pointing out that the under-representation of women in technology is an actual, real world problem that needs to be solved. This one male's ambitions is not really comparable.

What do you mean, women are under-represented in tech? As in: it needs to be 50/50 men and women? Or as in: the ratio of men/women working in tech should reflect the ratio of men/women who'd like to have a tech job?

How many female participants we got here on HN?

Is it safe to say that male members outnumber their female counterparts?

If so, what's the reason or the catalyst behind this disparity in interest and participation rate between sexes?

its called feminism and its pretty scary

before you downvote this preciding comment (or mine, for that matter), allow me a challenge: If you pick 10 woman who self-identified as feminists at random, how many do you predict will find this 2:1 ratio a good thing ?

I predict 7 or more.

I know that this might be frustrating to men out there but there is important silver lining.

Trust and Talent are finite things.

These institutions of "higher learning" became what they became because people trusted them to be impartial.

The more they continue with this type of shenanigans the more they will lose their relevance in the 21st Century. This is amazing opportunity for the crowd who read HN. These left out talented men are a market ! especially for businessmen looking for talented and driven people.

Also this 2:1 ratio is terrible news for women !

Now women won't be taken seriously even with a degree from some fancy place.

> Trust and Talent are finite things.

> These institutions of "higher learning" became what they became because people trusted them to be impartial.

> The more they continue with this type of shenanigans the more they will lose their relevance in the 21st Century.

I wouldn't call it silver lining. Yes, it may be good for some in the short term, but it's another case of people fucking up institutions and destroying trust for some random fashion-driven goals. Lack of social trust is already a serious problem (see the rise of anti-vaccine movements as an example) and we will pay hard for that in the future.

"destroying trust for some random fashion-driven goals"

Trust destruction has been the dominant economic model (outside tech) for a generation or two now. "Oh the shopkeeper would never screw me over". "Oh my banker would never screw me over". "Real estate agents never screw over their neighbors". "All stock brokers can be trusted". "I can trust my doctor/hospital" "I trust if I get an advanced degree an upper middle class job for me at that edu level will magically be created with great salary for me, by magic, because thats how it always used to work" "I can trust cops" Screw em over, keep the profits, wait for the federal bailout money to roll in, and do it over again.

> (outside tech)

And that's probably only because tech industry is barely two or three generations old. We're seeing the signs here too.

I have my pet theory that every market gets dominated by frauds as it matures. You can compete on the actual value you provide to people when the product/service is young, but after all low-hanging fruits are picked and there are no easy / significant improvements to be made, you still need to grow - and so the search for new methods of extracting money begins. Business models get more complicated, companies start to invest more and more into marketing and PR, and suddenly as a customer you can't trust your vendor anymore.

> Now women won't be taken seriously even with a degree from some fancy place.

Why do you say this? The experiment was about hiring faculty not about student standards.

> These institutions of "higher learning" became what they became because people trusted them to be impartial.

So when Universities believed[1] that African Americans were indeed an inferior race of humans they were being impartial? Not to mention that many of the great (old) western universities were closely affiliated with various churches for most of their history[2].

Universities were always part of society and as such they reflected the status quo at the time. They were not and are not "impartial". They are institutions of "higher learning" because they provide the resources and freedom for their professors to explore ideas that may have no commercial or practical benefit. That's it! As a result of this freedom, ideas coming out of Universities have often moved society/technology forwards.

Businesses that hire "talented and driven people" are probably not going to let them get paid while exploring the nature of the Higgs Boson or the philosophy or Nietzche.

[1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121382/forgotten-racist-p... "University scholars of the time argued that the racial inferiority of people of African descent justified their enslavement, and that enslavement would bring blacks closer to Christian salvation."

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University#19th_centur...

I don't think a lot of the posters on this forum have ever taken women seriously. (c.f. comments on this and similar threads)

Also on CNN:

"The low numbers of women in math-based fields of science do not result from sexist hiring, but rather from women's lower rates of choosing to enter math-based fields in the first place, due to sex differences in preferred careers and perhaps to lack of female role models and mentors."

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-wom...

You can't really say that until you have studied other fields' hiring practices.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9372297

The domain of the study is higher education at US institutions. Actual hiring is typically done by committee. The hiring process is often protracted with long application Windows and substantial gaps between offer and start date. The hiring committee typically is made up of line workers [professors] and subject to administrative and executive oversight. Public institutions may get political oversight as well.

Candidates for STEM professorships will often have already gone through previous academic hiring cycles as postdocs...that is there has been a previous screening with less oversight and less balanced power relations.

What this means is that we should use caution extrapolating the results of a study that models academic hiring on individuals reviewing CV's without collective and institutional input. We should also be cautious extrapolating from the academic world to ordinary commercial hiring due to the variances in goals, constraints and processes.

What it does reveal is a specific area of bias. Whether there are checks against it, and whether there ought to be, are different questions.

What it shows is that if all things are equal then there is bias. Of course if the premise of a material implication is false, the entire proposition always evaluates true.

That hiring processes in US academic institutions are subject to sex gender bias doesn't require more than looking at the diversity among the highest paid employees in US higher education, coaches.

>What it shows is that if all things are equal then there is bias.

Not quite, in a scientific study, it is preferable to control for a single variable, which in this case was gender. The bias in faculty member's decision making is shown clearly (as evidenced by the consistency of the effect size across groups). Whether or not men and women are on a level playing field in the first place is irrelevant to the question of whether faculty members are biased against one or the other.

>That hiring processes in US academic institutions are subject to sex gender bias doesn't require more than looking at the diversity among the highest paid employees in US higher education, coaches.

I'm not sure what argument you're making. "hiring in academic institutions" seems to be too broad a category for making useful generalizations, and I'm not sure how coaches' salaries relate to gender discrimination.

The study is here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.full...

The claim that it was controlled for a single variable indicates a general misconception of statistical methods and miscomprehension or nonreading of the study itself.

The study did not just present candidates qualifications, it was explicitly designed to include "lifestyle" factors such as marital status, number and ages of children, and spouse's occupation. To ensure this information unrelated to qualification was included, the study used summaries rather than CV's. The portion of the study which used CV's in lieu of the summaries was only 35 professors in a discipline (engineering) where women tend to be significantly under-represented.

The broader studies looked at economics (a dubious member of STEM in much the same way political or sports science would be) psychology, biology and engineering.

as the question raised in another thread here at HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9372297), on this very same topic

  "what are the real benefits and downsides (commercial and
  noncommercial) for the hiring preference of female over male, for
  microsoft and for the whole society?"

One of the reasons I could come up with is,

  "the industry hiring process starts to favor women than men, is to add
  more feminine elements in the product/service they sell, through
  increasing the women ratio in their team, and hence to attract more
  women consumers and also perhaps the feminine side of straight and gay
  men."

I found it extremely interesting when they said " faculty in all four disciplines preferred female applicants to male candidates, with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference."

Why did male economists show no gender preference ?

the scary thing is they are proud of this.

It scares me to. How can you expect productivity and fairness if you prefer one gender over another ? I also feel if they conducted a study in other professional fields like lawyers and financial jobs they would find similar results.

The actual study:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.full...

It's worth noting that lifestyle was one of the factors explicitly included in the broader portions of the study and that the only portion of the study where candidates were represented by their CV involved 37 engineering professors (engineering being an area (unlike psychology and biology in the broader experiments) where attracting more female students is a direct vector to department growth).

Does this study break out hiring for top-20ish departments in, say, theoretical physics? I could certainly envisage women being favoured in general but still disadvantaged when it comes to prestige institutions, particularly if the reports that hiring for those best positions comes down to "he's better than Smith, but not as good as Jones" assessments passed along the social grapevine are true.

Straight from the abstract:

>National randomized experiments and validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia.

Yes, I had read that. What I asked was whether the survey provided a breakout for the (kinds of) subgroup I specified.

Somewhat. They found that male economists lacked that bias. There wouldn't be enough info to make conclusions about top-20 physics depts specifically.

These studies seem so prevalent in today's age, maybe the participants know they are being studied, know what the outcome the study is looking for, and might overcompensate their behavior to make sure they "pass" the test.

I mean what kind of administrative academic can you show a set of "hypothetical resumes", and they don't say hmmm I think I've heard this one before.

Something I've been meaning to do, but lack the time to do, is to grep through CVS and git logs for the top 300 open source projects, map names to genders, and see how many women are contributing to open source.

Obviously, there will be more men. What I'm interested in is seeing if the ratio of men to women is greater than the general computer engineering industry.

1: STEM faculty positions are dominated by men of all ages.

2: We fix this by hiring more women.

3: In 40 years STEM faculty positions are dominated by women of all ages.

We need to phase out the old guard, which consists mostly of men, while not hiring along gender lines for their replacements else we will be right back where we started.

Assorted thoughts:

1. While it is certainly good that this study does not show an anti-female bias (not saying the 2:1 preference is necessarily good), I'm seeing this hailed as 'proof sexism doesn't exist,' which it is not. Several studies, the most notable one being from 2012 (Moss-Racusin is the author iirc), found that at the undergraduate level, men are preferred and given a high salary. If both of these studies are true, it means that as women age/gain higher degrees/prove themselves, this bias disappears. This makes sense when you think about it, but is still a good thing.

2. While I don't like this bias against men, I don't think men need to worry about it yet. Probably, the only reason the preference is so high is because so few women apply for these positions. Were an equal number of men and women applying for the position, it'd likely be a different story.

3. No one against the broad goal of 'sexism in tech' that I've heard at least is vying for 50-50 representation. If 70% of engineers are men, fine. The problem is that many girls who would become engineers are never exposed to it or are pushed away (some by the attitude that 'women just naturally don't like STEM'—read 'Unlocking the Clubhouse.') Much of the barriers to women in STEM come from childhood (women being less likely to take STEM classes due to low confidence in math etc)—it's good to see women don't need to worry about bias in academia, don't get me wrong. But I see strawmen here. As a woman in tech who got a late start because "math is hard for girls," and who had a programmer cousin who admitted to me that he never showed it to me because he assumed girls didn't like it, despite knowing I enjoyed math/physics—I'm not trying to build a 'fempire' in which women are preferred to men and the 1950s repeat themselves in reverse. I just want girls like me who love what they do to have the opportunity to do what I do.

Maybe we should have another study that shows "Man preferred 2:1 over women for non-STEM faculty positions(liberal arts, special speech, whatever)", to just balance it a bit?

I think it's time to encourage more boys into non-STEM fields, they're totally underpresented (sarcasm)

> "science and engineering faculty preferred women two-to-one over identically qualified male candidates for assistant professor positions"

Uhmm... science and engineering faculty are mainly men. So isn't this study saying that older male faculty members like to have young female faculty members as their underlings?

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i know you are being hyperbolic, but in all seriousness there is the potential for quotas to be put in place.

if I was fully qualified for my job, working hard, and than the government fired me in order to employ someone else simply because they were a different [characteristic ] than me I would quite literally take up arms as it would be obvious that the social contract had become null and void.

Wouldn't it be even more upsetting if you were never even hired in the first place?

no.

This is sarcasm... right?

If not then... I'm not even sure where to start with the problems in that plan.

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Men (and many women) would strike and refuse to go to work in the first place, because they know they have absolutely no job real security, and run the risk of being shot at work purely because of their gender.

So, it wouldn't solve the problem... probably because it's fascistic and sexist?

How would you feel if it were the other way around, and it was insufficient white people relative to blacks, and we just killed off the excess if their employers try to shield them and replace them with white workers? You know: Apartheid?

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