10 ms·

I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

643 points by Lisa2000 13y ago

"I made one change that day. I put Mr. in front of my name [Kim] on my CV. It looked a little too formal for my liking but I got an interview for the very next job I applied for. And the one after that. It all happened in a fortnight, and the second job was a substantial increase in responsibility over anything I had done before. In the end I beat out a very competitive short-list and enjoyed that job for the next few years, further enhancing my career."

throwaway420 13y ago
Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article. To me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect. Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect. Personally speaking, I believe that technical people are sick and tired of the sausage fests at most technical companies and all other things being equal would go out of their way to hire more women.
- dominotw 13y ago
  True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
  - breadbox 13y ago
    It's not a conscious motivation. But if you go through life working with nothing but men, it becomes harder to visualize a woman doing your job, or doing it well. (Because otherwise where are they? Thus the term "status quo".)
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men. You don't have to think so hard about how what you say might be perceived. Taking the overhead of that mental filter out of the loop lets men feel more at ease around each other. I'm not making a moral judgment, just describing what I've seen over the years as to one explanation of how men can have a subconscious bias that prefers hiring men.
    - bitops 13y ago
      > Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men. That's an important observation and plays a huge role in perpetuating sexism and gender discrimination. It continues to exist because guys let other guys get away with it. If you speak up and indicate that you're not okay with it, behaviors and attitudes may change. It's not easy and it requires courage. But it's necessary to really make a dent in the historical patterns.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Maybe it isn't a problem that needs fixing? Maybe making work another place of constant judgement and time under the PC microscope would not be a net positive? Remember there's a difference between bare-faced misogyny and garden variety politically incorrectness.
        bitops 13y ago
        I'm certainly not advocating that work should be a place of constant judgment. And I'm not fan of being under a constant behavioral microscope. I do find it important that work be a place where I feel respected and safe. Eliminating sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace is part of that effort.
        dominotw 13y ago
        Nice observation. One of my colleague got a stern warning for using the word dick ( 'dont be a dick' kind of way) around female colleagues, because two women sitting behind him complained to management about it. I am sure he is not discriminatory, biased or misogynistic. I guess it wise to think about what you are saying and not say stuff like 'fuck off', 'stop bitching' which may be construed as inappropriate.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    > True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. This may sound reasonable, but this is actually the opposite of what happens. In terms of hiring, people tend to leverage existing social networks and look for people that are similar to themselves. This generally puts a bias in favor of candidates who are not women, esp. when hiring for positions that are higher up in a company or business, as men generally outnumber women in higher level positions. > What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive. Bias against women can take many forms and it may not be overt. Attitudes and basic opinions on women often form the basis for a actions that are micro aggressions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression To that end, some people (men or women) may see women as not fit to do a task, not fit with a particular culture or set of workers, not able to interact with other depts. or businesses as a representative of a company, etc. Of course, there may be overt sexist discrimination as well.
crazygringo 13y ago
That's really, really sad. And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect. What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.
- cliveowen 13y ago
  There is a simple way to fix it. Namely providing a means to submit your resume that anonymizes name, gender, age and anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment. The best HR departments already do that, at least that's the hope.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    HR departments are legal shields - they will prevent bias against a protected class because that's a source of lawsuits. Unfortunately there are many ways in which a person may be unfairly discriminated when looking for a job, than there are protected classes in the law.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    It's easy enough to fix for screening for gender, but it's much harder to fix the screening for age, because people like to see a sequence of activities. At the very least, work experience years comes across. When people leave off graduation dates, that throws up a red flag too. The harder part is how do you turn off the bias once the interviews start? This was an issue with many orchestras - they ultimately made the auditions physically blind. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Goldin&Rouse.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Goldin&Rouse.pdf
    - whiterabbit2 13y ago
      For tech companies it shouldn't be a problem to interview candidates blindly. Give some questions as written tests and coding assignments. If talking is necessary, there is software changing voice pitch. Skype has a plugin like that. Just interview a candidate sitting in another room, streaming what they write and use the same voice settings for all candidates. My impression that nobody uses written tests because companies want to keep bias, not to eliminate it.
jessriedel 13y ago
There is much better data out there concerning the effect of gender (and race) on CVs. That would be much more useful than this guy's anecdotal experience.
- sp332 13y ago
  It's not supposed to be data. It's supposed to change your perspective on the data you have.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    So what does "the data" say?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    The first third of the story leads with all this talk about how he had all the qualifications and shouldn't have any trouble finding a job. Then a couple paragraphs about how hard it was to find, and how this was so surprising. Then a couple of paragraphs on how "Kim" could be assumed female. And then a complete turn around when he added "Mr". This was supposed to be data, in the sense that it was supposed to provide you with the sense that, empirically, gender has a huge effect. If you subtract this from the story, what do you have left? A personal account of how having difficulty finding a job shakes your confidence, forming maybe 3 or 4 sentences? Were you unaware that getting rejections is hard?
    - sp332 13y ago
      The article gives you a mental tool that you can apply as you like to various situations that you encounter. It's like learning a type of logical fallacy. You wouldn't disregard an article that described what a "false dilemma" is as "having no data".
betterunix 13y ago
Maybe it had to do with the resume appearing more formal. Try another version with "Ms." and another with "Mrs." to really make this something we can draw conclusions from.
- crygin 13y ago
  When you use the "anecdote-not-data" contentless dismissal, you're not supposed to follow it up with a suggestion to add a control to the single data point.
Dirlewanger 13y ago
This was the late 90s. A lot has changed since then. Yeah, there's still problems with male-dominated industries but it's gotten a lot better. Nowadays it's more about getting women even interested in the fields.
- hack_edu 13y ago
  You would hope, but sadly not much as changed. There have been numerous experiments lately where someone created identical mid-career LinkedIn profiles one posing as a man and another as a woman. The male profile always gets far more views and recruiter messages.
  - Peroni 13y ago
    >You would hope, but sadly not much as changed. The finance industry has a terrible reputation for blatant sexism for example however it's been proven categorically by the world largest finance recruitment firm that over the last 70 years the number of females in executive positions in finance is steadily and blatantly improving. Their studies also prove that there is still a gender issue in finance but claiming that not much has changed is categorically wrong.
typon 13y ago
Is it weird that this article doesn't have many comments?
- bitops 13y ago
  Not at all. Thoughtful and open discussion on gender discrimination is hard to come by, even on Hacker News. I think a hard first step to take is admitting that the problem really is quite serious and that it is something that affects all of us.
- jol 13y ago
  some of previous cases was just making fuss out of nothing, however this is a real problem here. As HN is usually better at criticising, I don't think there is much to add...
robot_friend 13y ago
I am female with a hybrid background in UI design and front-end dev. A while back I created a fake linkedin profile identical to mine except with a male name. Even though it has no profile picture and no contacts, the fake profile gets more recruiter messages than I do, and for more technical positions (I get ones for design, he gets ones for engineering).
- wf 13y ago
  You should write about this somewhere.
  - ralphc 13y ago
    LinkedIn has a blog, doesn't it have guest writers? You should try for that, give them a chance first.
- djKianoosh 13y ago
  You know something.. In the past I used to do a lot tech interviews and phone screens. And I think I would actually give you bonus points if my company found you via your fake profile and we ended up chatting. After about 1.5 seconds of confusion, I'd be thinking, well, this lady has some resourcefulness... Did you ever follow up on any of those offers via the fake profile? I'm curious to know the reaction. I know I'd look at it favorably. But I might be in the minority. Don't know.
- crapshoot101 13y ago
  That is incredibly depressing. Have you followed up to see if they reacted differently when they found out you were not a man?
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Perhaps the recruiters have some negative real-life information that discounts your actual profile but no such negative information against your fake one. Your evidence doesn't show sex discrimination.
  - 13y ago
cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get addressing me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc. Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as well, I'm thinking of some study they did where they attached photos with the resumes - the "attractive" people (both men and women) were rated as better skilled than the "normal" and "ugly" people that had the same resume. Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention! My name isn't even gender neutral, very feminine...I think I once was on some board online using my real name and people were still assuming I was a guy. When I asked how they could possibly think it was a male name, they replied, "I dunno, I was thinking it was like one of those fancy Italian names, like Fabio or whatever..Fabia..yeah, same thing...they always sound like girls names." I've now started picking the most ridiculously cutsie usernames possible, like this one, to keep people guessing. Sometimes it backfires still and people just get homophobic, but I generally stick with it anyway for fun :)
- nawitus 13y ago
  >Isn't necessarily a bad thing. I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.
  - cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
    Well, that's why I said "isn't necessarily" - some people may not mind and be happy to reap the benefits, and others (like you) would (justifiably) feel offended. In my experience it hasn't really been 100% about "just being the token woman" but I feel like I have gotten interviews and jobs that I wouldn't have otherwise.
  - lmm 13y ago
    I'd rather be offended and have money in the bank than the other way around.
thehme 13y ago
This is so sad...wow! I cannot imagine what goes through people's heads when they see a very qualifies individual and then they decide it's a woman and skip even considering her.
- sp332 13y ago
  They never see the qualified individual. They trained their brain to do pattern-recognition on the resume for quick filtering, and women just don't fit the pattern. They probably don't even realize they've trained themselves to ignore women like you don't pay attention to the weight of the shirt on your back. It doesn't rise to the level of consciousness.
king_jester 13y ago
Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practices in the US. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.Bias_.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.B... (pdf warning)
- gcb0 13y ago
  being devils advocate... he may just have used a too modern CV layout and using Mr. ended up balancing things out. I suffered more age discrimination after a certain point in my career than gender discrimination. And he does mention he went over the top crafting his resume...
- nawitus 13y ago
  >It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. All genders face gender discrimination. For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government. Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations. Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on. Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.[1] 1. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-american-rape-victims/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-a...
  - Anechoic 13y ago
    Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male. This has been addressed a couple of times. Note that 1) the 216,000 number is for victims of "sexual abuse" which doesn't necessarily mean "rape" and 2) not all inmates of penitentiaries are male.
ds9 13y ago
I was very surprised to see the admission of his giving family information. Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US, and I've always thought it improper to put it on a resume. It either invites unfavorable discrimination or comes across as a ploy for sympathy or favoritism. It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it was no longer considered OK even before the 90s.
- larrys 13y ago
  "Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US" Regardless of what you can ask you can always ping people and find out answers. You can discuss your own situation and see a reaction on the part of the person you are speaking with. Takes a bit of creativity. I know of someone who wanted to hire only puerto ricans for his bricks and mortar store (forgetting the reason). So you can't advertise for "puerto ricans" but you can say "knowledge of spanish a plus".
- jacalata 13y ago
  I don't think Australia has the same protected class aspect as the US, so it may well be more acceptable there.
deleted 13y ago
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simonbarker87 13y ago
We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female. Reasons for this could be: 1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility) 2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.
- untog 13y ago
  You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.
  - simonbarker87 13y ago
    Agreed, but thinking over the CVs we've rejected and the people we've interviewed it's been pretty balanced in the number of male vs female. Obviously its not a perfect 50:50, and nor should it be as that would indicate some sort of bias. Maybe the solution to this problem is to have recruiters and HR departments redact the name of someone and replace with a number. In the UK it's not a requirement to ask for someones age on their CV so maybe internal processes could be implemented to further reduce the likelihood of subconscious, or conscious, bias.
  - yaddayadda 13y ago
    Indeed! Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
    - kstenerud 13y ago
      Unfortunately, their software is broken. It goes through the test, and then the post test questions (I strongly prefer X, etc) just keep repeating over and over. You can't actually complete a test.
Peroni 13y ago
The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference. It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more. Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.
- zorbo 13y ago
  When it comes to sexual bias, hacker news readers/commenters generally discard the "evidence" bit. And of course, nobody mentions the author's obvious anti-male and age bias ("but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle-aged men who thought I was a woman").
  - andrewflnr 13y ago
    One stereotype used as a rhetorical device doesn't imply he actually thinks worse of "middle-aged men" than any other group. That was just the relevant stereotype for the situation.
- lotyrin 13y ago
  He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics. It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    But it happened in the "late 90s." One anecdote from 15 years ago is not really of much value today, IMO.
- detcader 13y ago
  I'm a male and I'm tired of hearing "there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists" because it's not "sexism", it's normalization of gendered oppression on a cultural level. Girls and young women are taught to be domestic, to not aspire to men's work, and they are taught half-consciously, culturally, through the media and activities they are made to take part in. Boys are taught that their competence is natural and are segregated socially and often physically from living, playing, and interacting with girls, and the culture of "girl-things"[1]. "The Gender Trap" by NYU sociologist Emily Kane documents this, and contains an excellent bibilography for more research on this. It is established academically, but people don't want to hear it -- it's radical feminist nonsense, man-hating (or "self-hating" if you're a male), so we don't have to look at the research. But men are affected as well. Older men take longer to report symptoms of serious disease to doctors because they are taught that they should be able to handle it. Men are deprived of emotional outlet and expected to live up to impossible standards, foregoing friendships with women in the process. You see all these young men with unrequited love ("friend-zoned") who can't accept friendship with female people and thus must invent strategy to solve the woman-puzzle-box or justification for harassment. Questioning gender itself is the best solution, logically. [1] Rough examples for "girl-things" as a phenomenon: A girl can wear blue or pink, but a boy wearing pink is doing a "girl-thing" (I've read that the color scheme was reversed a under a century ago). A young woman can watch an action movie or a romantic comedy, but when a young man watches a chick-flick what is he, gay?
crazysaem 13y ago
I am graduating in a few month and also applied for some jobs in the USA (I'm from germany). I found it somewhat intresting that every employer I sent my resume to was asking what gender and race(!) I was before I could submit. You could also choose the option not to give an answer, but I have never seen that in germany. On the other hand some people on HN find it odd to have a picture of you on your CV - which is the norm here.
- ahoy 13y ago
  Every american employer asks for that, it's a legal thing I believe, and (supposedly) not related to hiring.
- mynewwork 13y ago
  They don't use that information for interviewing/hiring decisions. If they have any contracts with the federal government, they are legally required to collect that information about applicants specifically for compliance with equal opportunity employment. In other words, no one was looking at that information when looking at your resume. Someone in HR was looking at aggregate data at the end of the year to say "Hey, we're hiring group X at above/below average" or in the event of a lawsuit to prove they don't discriminate.
eikenberry 13y ago
Not to argue that gender bias doesn't exist. But this is not a good study case as he tainted his resume pretty badly from the start. Not being currently employed is a red flag to a lot of employers and gets you immediately discarded. And putting personal information, even if seemingly innocent, triggers the lawsuit avoidance mechanism at a lot of places and immediately gets you discarded.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  I'm not sure you really read it closely. The ONLY thing that changed about his resume is the clarifying "Mr.". Whatever faults his resume might have were present before and after, yet the differences in its reception were dramatic.
lsiebert 13y ago
If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualified people who have not been hired.
- lmm 13y ago
  Why should I be concerned? I like working with talented people, but my experience has been that those employers that employ gender-balanced workforce employ a lower proportion of highly talented people than those that do not. And if we're speaking solely about self-interest then as a male such discrimination works in my favour. So no, that's not "all the reason any intelligent person needs", you have to give an actual reason.
  - whiterabbit2 13y ago
    It depends on the definition of "talented". If "me myself and everybody like me" then it's very logical.
    - claudius 13y ago
      If you need someone with qualification X, and n%, n != 50, of students attending university to earn qualification X are of gender A, yet you try to employ genders A and B equally, you will get fewer good people with qualification X than if you employed n% people of gender A and (100-n)% people of gender B. Since there are very, very few subjects attended equally by both genders, employing equally will get you worse people. Note that the above actually assumes that people from both genders are in general equally capable/intelligent. If you add, for example, a higher standard deviation of the IQ for gender C, you will get even more skewed results.
lsiebert 13y ago
If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualified people who have not been hired.
nashequilibrium 13y ago
Okay HN, I knew this sounded familiar and then i remembered a similar story which was flagged and kicked off the front page. http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman-pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/ http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woma... Could someone explain why one was flagged and the other not? I am honestly just curious.
rachelbythebay 13y ago
I really want to read this, but the site goes completely bonkers on iOS. I can see some content but it's wedged behind this top banner. They don't really expect people to read through a tiny gap in their images, do they?
- Sprint 13y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, on my desktop scrolling does not work with neither space, the cursor arrows or the scroll wheel. Another addition for my "don't waste my time" domain block list. The whole content of the post is "I got rejected many times. I added a Mr. before my name. I got accepted many times."
redwood 13y ago
Interestingly, it's not just a case of gender: Rather the uncertainty and its associated cognitive dissonance, leaves a negative feeling in the mind of a reader. There are many other kinds of uncertainty present in a resume; and its always a risky factor because folks like to understand context. Have an ethnic name? Assume people might think you're an immigrant. If you don't want them to assume that: emphasize where you're from, etc. This is good personal branding. Is it unfortunate that you might feel a liability here? yes For example, in my office when someone doesn't show their picture in our email system: I feel negative about them. When they don't show a picture and have a name that makes it difficult to know how to refer to them, I'm doubly-frustrated. Much of this frustration is subconscious but people need to be congnicent of how they come across to others in many contexts. here I choose to be 100% identity neutral, because I can be. But in work this is a big mistake, because formal expectations are applied in correspondence and you need to feel you're meeting those expectations with a job applicant. If you're in this position, you've done yourself a disservice: "Dear Sir or Madam, We are sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you a position" Is this a problem with our society? yes.
cm2012 13y ago
I kind of doubt that this is true. Wouldn't the managers see that she was a female in the interview, and ask why she misrepresented herself or take that opportunity to not hire her?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
niccl 13y ago
This is scary. I go out of my way to remove gender hints from my CV. In particular I use a shortened version of my first name which is slightly more commonly associated with women. And I have had problems finding work recently. Now, do I change things because I need work? I could even pretend it was a bit of research to give a second data point to this story.
vertis 13y ago
Original blog post: http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/h...
Toyama 13y ago
I don't understand what is all the fuss about, when it comes to software developer women in 90% of cases are less efficient than men. (my anecdotal evidence, but also look at github, nobody's stopping women to post open source projects on github) And do you think that for remaining 10% women should be treated equally? Why should I spend more resources looking for women when quality men workers are easier to find? Does my feeling of compassion for the 10% of women who deserve to be hired is enough to compensate for the time I waste on filtering?
amerika 13y ago
If someone wants to hire only people of one gender, what's the harm in that? There are other places to work.
lucb1e 13y ago
Oh my god. I'd seriously write fuck you letters in 72pt bold comic sans ms to all other companies, explaining what dicks they were. Seriously, 4 months of nothing (must have been lots of applications), and then the word "Mr" changes it all? Incredible.
eldude 13y ago
Since this is entirely devoid of any discernible facts, it's a little disturbing that this has made it to the front page of HN. When did random assertions become unquestioned truth? This feels a lot like a sensationalized modern day witch hunt, "Burn the misoginists! Burn the sexists!" Also, for whatever it's worth, never have I heard "Kim" considered anything but a woman's name.
deleted 13y ago
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johnvschmitt 13y ago
As a father, when I had my first kid, & read a few "Parents" magazines, I was so disheartened to see 99% of the references in articles referring to the parent as the "mom" or "She/her". I said, "WTF! Are fathers not parents!?" Then, it hit me. As a male engineer, manager, etc... I just got a very small taste of the less than subtle gender biases that exist all around us. That made me appreciate my wife more (who is also an engineer), and all the others who put up with that crap even in this modern day. This is the only forum I've complained about "Parent's Magazine"'s female gender bias. And, I only do so within a context that shows it's just a lesson in empathy for a much more severe bias in the other direction.
- klipt 13y ago
  > bias in the other direction No, both biases are in the same direction - "women stay home and parent" and "men go out and work" are two sides of the same coin. By choosing not to fight the stereotype that those parenting are women, you are implicitly shoring up the stereotype that those working are men. Mind blown yet?
nkorth 13y ago
I would love to read this article, but quartz.com is horribly broken in Opera Mobile on my phone... I'll just wait and read it on my laptop, but this does look like a sign of Webkit bringing back the days of sites "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6".
JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
Not to negate the point, but I witnessed some MALE gender discrimination when applying to a local IBM office for a college co-op. Ratio of females to males is low in computer programming courses, but 100% of females were interviewed for an IBM position, and 0% of males were interviewed (approx. 6 females and 16 males). This happened twice in back-to-back years. It seems the whole gender discrimination has taken a swing in the opposite direction for this small office - work hard to find female workers over male workers. But I haven't figured if they are doing this because they care about female workers, or they want to boost their public image? Are they giving females a chance to prove themselves to work for IBM, or are they just filling the most menial jobs with females to balance out their gender ratio? This doesn't seem like the "give the job to the person best fit for it" mentality, but maybe to them the "first glance" isn't enough to make that decision. Plus, this was just a co-op, almost anyone in the class could perform the position. I decided to view IBM's actions as a form of tactic to develop female presence in IT industry rather than gender discrimination.
wittysense 13y ago
I got to "ball-busting" then realized the irony. Next.

643 points by Lisa2000 13y ago

throwaway420 13y ago

Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article. To me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect. Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect. Personally speaking, I believe that technical people are sick and tired of the sausage fests at most technical companies and all other things being equal would go out of their way to hire more women.

dominotw 13y ago
True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
- breadbox 13y ago
  It's not a conscious motivation. But if you go through life working with nothing but men, it becomes harder to visualize a woman doing your job, or doing it well. (Because otherwise where are they? Thus the term "status quo".)
- Amadou 13y ago
  Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men. You don't have to think so hard about how what you say might be perceived. Taking the overhead of that mental filter out of the loop lets men feel more at ease around each other. I'm not making a moral judgment, just describing what I've seen over the years as to one explanation of how men can have a subconscious bias that prefers hiring men.
  - bitops 13y ago
    > Men can get away with making sexist jokes (or even not-jokes) around other men. That's an important observation and plays a huge role in perpetuating sexism and gender discrimination. It continues to exist because guys let other guys get away with it. If you speak up and indicate that you're not okay with it, behaviors and attitudes may change. It's not easy and it requires courage. But it's necessary to really make a dent in the historical patterns.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Maybe it isn't a problem that needs fixing? Maybe making work another place of constant judgement and time under the PC microscope would not be a net positive? Remember there's a difference between bare-faced misogyny and garden variety politically incorrectness.
      - bitops 13y ago
        I'm certainly not advocating that work should be a place of constant judgment. And I'm not fan of being under a constant behavioral microscope. I do find it important that work be a place where I feel respected and safe. Eliminating sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace is part of that effort.
      - dominotw 13y ago
        Nice observation. One of my colleague got a stern warning for using the word dick ( 'dont be a dick' kind of way) around female colleagues, because two women sitting behind him complained to management about it. I am sure he is not discriminatory, biased or misogynistic. I guess it wise to think about what you are saying and not say stuff like 'fuck off', 'stop bitching' which may be construed as inappropriate.
- king_jester 13y ago
  > True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said. This may sound reasonable, but this is actually the opposite of what happens. In terms of hiring, people tend to leverage existing social networks and look for people that are similar to themselves. This generally puts a bias in favor of candidates who are not women, esp. when hiring for positions that are higher up in a company or business, as men generally outnumber women in higher level positions. > What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive. Bias against women can take many forms and it may not be overt. Attitudes and basic opinions on women often form the basis for a actions that are micro aggressions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression To that end, some people (men or women) may see women as not fit to do a task, not fit with a particular culture or set of workers, not able to interact with other depts. or businesses as a representative of a company, etc. Of course, there may be overt sexist discrimination as well.

crazygringo 13y ago

That's really, really sad. And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect. What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.

cliveowen 13y ago
There is a simple way to fix it. Namely providing a means to submit your resume that anonymizes name, gender, age and anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment. The best HR departments already do that, at least that's the hope.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  HR departments are legal shields - they will prevent bias against a protected class because that's a source of lawsuits. Unfortunately there are many ways in which a person may be unfairly discriminated when looking for a job, than there are protected classes in the law.
- mathattack 13y ago
  It's easy enough to fix for screening for gender, but it's much harder to fix the screening for age, because people like to see a sequence of activities. At the very least, work experience years comes across. When people leave off graduation dates, that throws up a red flag too. The harder part is how do you turn off the bias once the interviews start? This was an issue with many orchestras - they ultimately made the auditions physically blind. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Goldin&Rouse.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Goldin&Rouse.pdf
  - whiterabbit2 13y ago
    For tech companies it shouldn't be a problem to interview candidates blindly. Give some questions as written tests and coding assignments. If talking is necessary, there is software changing voice pitch. Skype has a plugin like that. Just interview a candidate sitting in another room, streaming what they write and use the same voice settings for all candidates. My impression that nobody uses written tests because companies want to keep bias, not to eliminate it.

jessriedel 13y ago

There is much better data out there concerning the effect of gender (and race) on CVs. That would be much more useful than this guy's anecdotal experience.

sp332 13y ago
It's not supposed to be data. It's supposed to change your perspective on the data you have.
- nawitus 13y ago
  So what does "the data" say?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jessriedel 13y ago
  The first third of the story leads with all this talk about how he had all the qualifications and shouldn't have any trouble finding a job. Then a couple paragraphs about how hard it was to find, and how this was so surprising. Then a couple of paragraphs on how "Kim" could be assumed female. And then a complete turn around when he added "Mr". This was supposed to be data, in the sense that it was supposed to provide you with the sense that, empirically, gender has a huge effect. If you subtract this from the story, what do you have left? A personal account of how having difficulty finding a job shakes your confidence, forming maybe 3 or 4 sentences? Were you unaware that getting rejections is hard?
  - sp332 13y ago
    The article gives you a mental tool that you can apply as you like to various situations that you encounter. It's like learning a type of logical fallacy. You wouldn't disregard an article that described what a "false dilemma" is as "having no data".

betterunix 13y ago

Maybe it had to do with the resume appearing more formal. Try another version with "Ms." and another with "Mrs." to really make this something we can draw conclusions from.

crygin 13y ago
When you use the "anecdote-not-data" contentless dismissal, you're not supposed to follow it up with a suggestion to add a control to the single data point.

Dirlewanger 13y ago

This was the late 90s. A lot has changed since then. Yeah, there's still problems with male-dominated industries but it's gotten a lot better. Nowadays it's more about getting women even interested in the fields.

hack_edu 13y ago
You would hope, but sadly not much as changed. There have been numerous experiments lately where someone created identical mid-career LinkedIn profiles one posing as a man and another as a woman. The male profile always gets far more views and recruiter messages.
- Peroni 13y ago
  >You would hope, but sadly not much as changed. The finance industry has a terrible reputation for blatant sexism for example however it's been proven categorically by the world largest finance recruitment firm that over the last 70 years the number of females in executive positions in finance is steadily and blatantly improving. Their studies also prove that there is still a gender issue in finance but claiming that not much has changed is categorically wrong.

typon 13y ago

Is it weird that this article doesn't have many comments?

bitops 13y ago
Not at all. Thoughtful and open discussion on gender discrimination is hard to come by, even on Hacker News. I think a hard first step to take is admitting that the problem really is quite serious and that it is something that affects all of us.
jol 13y ago
some of previous cases was just making fuss out of nothing, however this is a real problem here. As HN is usually better at criticising, I don't think there is much to add...

robot_friend 13y ago

I am female with a hybrid background in UI design and front-end dev. A while back I created a fake linkedin profile identical to mine except with a male name. Even though it has no profile picture and no contacts, the fake profile gets more recruiter messages than I do, and for more technical positions (I get ones for design, he gets ones for engineering).

wf 13y ago
You should write about this somewhere.
- ralphc 13y ago
  LinkedIn has a blog, doesn't it have guest writers? You should try for that, give them a chance first.
djKianoosh 13y ago
You know something.. In the past I used to do a lot tech interviews and phone screens. And I think I would actually give you bonus points if my company found you via your fake profile and we ended up chatting. After about 1.5 seconds of confusion, I'd be thinking, well, this lady has some resourcefulness... Did you ever follow up on any of those offers via the fake profile? I'm curious to know the reaction. I know I'd look at it favorably. But I might be in the minority. Don't know.
crapshoot101 13y ago
That is incredibly depressing. Have you followed up to see if they reacted differently when they found out you were not a man?
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Perhaps the recruiters have some negative real-life information that discounts your actual profile but no such negative information against your fake one. Your evidence doesn't show sex discrimination.
- 13y ago

cupcake-unicorn 13y ago

I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get addressing me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc. Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as well, I'm thinking of some study they did where they attached photos with the resumes - the "attractive" people (both men and women) were rated as better skilled than the "normal" and "ugly" people that had the same resume. Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention! My name isn't even gender neutral, very feminine...I think I once was on some board online using my real name and people were still assuming I was a guy. When I asked how they could possibly think it was a male name, they replied, "I dunno, I was thinking it was like one of those fancy Italian names, like Fabio or whatever..Fabia..yeah, same thing...they always sound like girls names." I've now started picking the most ridiculously cutsie usernames possible, like this one, to keep people guessing. Sometimes it backfires still and people just get homophobic, but I generally stick with it anyway for fun :)

nawitus 13y ago
>Isn't necessarily a bad thing. I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.
- cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
  Well, that's why I said "isn't necessarily" - some people may not mind and be happy to reap the benefits, and others (like you) would (justifiably) feel offended. In my experience it hasn't really been 100% about "just being the token woman" but I feel like I have gotten interviews and jobs that I wouldn't have otherwise.
- lmm 13y ago
  I'd rather be offended and have money in the bank than the other way around.

thehme 13y ago

This is so sad...wow! I cannot imagine what goes through people's heads when they see a very qualifies individual and then they decide it's a woman and skip even considering her.

sp332 13y ago
They never see the qualified individual. They trained their brain to do pattern-recognition on the resume for quick filtering, and women just don't fit the pattern. They probably don't even realize they've trained themselves to ignore women like you don't pay attention to the weight of the shirt on your back. It doesn't rise to the level of consciousness.

king_jester 13y ago

Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practices in the US. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.Bias_.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.B... (pdf warning)

gcb0 13y ago
being devils advocate... he may just have used a too modern CV layout and using Mr. ended up balancing things out. I suffered more age discrimination after a certain point in my career than gender discrimination. And he does mention he went over the top crafting his resume...
nawitus 13y ago
>It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence. All genders face gender discrimination. For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government. Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations. Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on. Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.[1] 1. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-american-rape-victims/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-a...
- Anechoic 13y ago
  Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male. This has been addressed a couple of times. Note that 1) the 216,000 number is for victims of "sexual abuse" which doesn't necessarily mean "rape" and 2) not all inmates of penitentiaries are male.

ds9 13y ago

I was very surprised to see the admission of his giving family information. Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US, and I've always thought it improper to put it on a resume. It either invites unfavorable discrimination or comes across as a ploy for sympathy or favoritism. It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it was no longer considered OK even before the 90s.

larrys 13y ago
"Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US" Regardless of what you can ask you can always ping people and find out answers. You can discuss your own situation and see a reaction on the part of the person you are speaking with. Takes a bit of creativity. I know of someone who wanted to hire only puerto ricans for his bricks and mortar store (forgetting the reason). So you can't advertise for "puerto ricans" but you can say "knowledge of spanish a plus".
jacalata 13y ago
I don't think Australia has the same protected class aspect as the US, so it may well be more acceptable there.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

simonbarker87 13y ago

We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female. Reasons for this could be: 1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility) 2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.

untog 13y ago
You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.
- simonbarker87 13y ago
  Agreed, but thinking over the CVs we've rejected and the people we've interviewed it's been pretty balanced in the number of male vs female. Obviously its not a perfect 50:50, and nor should it be as that would indicate some sort of bias. Maybe the solution to this problem is to have recruiters and HR departments redact the name of someone and replace with a number. In the UK it's not a requirement to ask for someones age on their CV so maybe internal processes could be implemented to further reduce the likelihood of subconscious, or conscious, bias.
- yaddayadda 13y ago
  Indeed! Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
  - kstenerud 13y ago
    Unfortunately, their software is broken. It goes through the test, and then the post test questions (I strongly prefer X, etc) just keep repeating over and over. You can't actually complete a test.

Peroni 13y ago

The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference. It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more. Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.

zorbo 13y ago
When it comes to sexual bias, hacker news readers/commenters generally discard the "evidence" bit. And of course, nobody mentions the author's obvious anti-male and age bias ("but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle-aged men who thought I was a woman").
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  One stereotype used as a rhetorical device doesn't imply he actually thinks worse of "middle-aged men" than any other group. That was just the relevant stereotype for the situation.
lotyrin 13y ago
He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics. It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  But it happened in the "late 90s." One anecdote from 15 years ago is not really of much value today, IMO.
detcader 13y ago
I'm a male and I'm tired of hearing "there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists" because it's not "sexism", it's normalization of gendered oppression on a cultural level. Girls and young women are taught to be domestic, to not aspire to men's work, and they are taught half-consciously, culturally, through the media and activities they are made to take part in. Boys are taught that their competence is natural and are segregated socially and often physically from living, playing, and interacting with girls, and the culture of "girl-things"[1]. "The Gender Trap" by NYU sociologist Emily Kane documents this, and contains an excellent bibilography for more research on this. It is established academically, but people don't want to hear it -- it's radical feminist nonsense, man-hating (or "self-hating" if you're a male), so we don't have to look at the research. But men are affected as well. Older men take longer to report symptoms of serious disease to doctors because they are taught that they should be able to handle it. Men are deprived of emotional outlet and expected to live up to impossible standards, foregoing friendships with women in the process. You see all these young men with unrequited love ("friend-zoned") who can't accept friendship with female people and thus must invent strategy to solve the woman-puzzle-box or justification for harassment. Questioning gender itself is the best solution, logically. [1] Rough examples for "girl-things" as a phenomenon: A girl can wear blue or pink, but a boy wearing pink is doing a "girl-thing" (I've read that the color scheme was reversed a under a century ago). A young woman can watch an action movie or a romantic comedy, but when a young man watches a chick-flick what is he, gay?

crazysaem 13y ago

I am graduating in a few month and also applied for some jobs in the USA (I'm from germany). I found it somewhat intresting that every employer I sent my resume to was asking what gender and race(!) I was before I could submit. You could also choose the option not to give an answer, but I have never seen that in germany. On the other hand some people on HN find it odd to have a picture of you on your CV - which is the norm here.

ahoy 13y ago
Every american employer asks for that, it's a legal thing I believe, and (supposedly) not related to hiring.
mynewwork 13y ago
They don't use that information for interviewing/hiring decisions. If they have any contracts with the federal government, they are legally required to collect that information about applicants specifically for compliance with equal opportunity employment. In other words, no one was looking at that information when looking at your resume. Someone in HR was looking at aggregate data at the end of the year to say "Hey, we're hiring group X at above/below average" or in the event of a lawsuit to prove they don't discriminate.

eikenberry 13y ago

Not to argue that gender bias doesn't exist. But this is not a good study case as he tainted his resume pretty badly from the start. Not being currently employed is a red flag to a lot of employers and gets you immediately discarded. And putting personal information, even if seemingly innocent, triggers the lawsuit avoidance mechanism at a lot of places and immediately gets you discarded.

acjohnson55 13y ago
I'm not sure you really read it closely. The ONLY thing that changed about his resume is the clarifying "Mr.". Whatever faults his resume might have were present before and after, yet the differences in its reception were dramatic.

lsiebert 13y ago

If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualified people who have not been hired.

lmm 13y ago
Why should I be concerned? I like working with talented people, but my experience has been that those employers that employ gender-balanced workforce employ a lower proportion of highly talented people than those that do not. And if we're speaking solely about self-interest then as a male such discrimination works in my favour. So no, that's not "all the reason any intelligent person needs", you have to give an actual reason.
- whiterabbit2 13y ago
  It depends on the definition of "talented". If "me myself and everybody like me" then it's very logical.
  - claudius 13y ago
    If you need someone with qualification X, and n%, n != 50, of students attending university to earn qualification X are of gender A, yet you try to employ genders A and B equally, you will get fewer good people with qualification X than if you employed n% people of gender A and (100-n)% people of gender B. Since there are very, very few subjects attended equally by both genders, employing equally will get you worse people. Note that the above actually assumes that people from both genders are in general equally capable/intelligent. If you add, for example, a higher standard deviation of the IQ for gender C, you will get even more skewed results.

lsiebert 13y ago

nashequilibrium 13y ago

Okay HN, I knew this sounded familiar and then i remembered a similar story which was flagged and kicked off the front page. http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman-pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/ http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woma... Could someone explain why one was flagged and the other not? I am honestly just curious.

rachelbythebay 13y ago

I really want to read this, but the site goes completely bonkers on iOS. I can see some content but it's wedged behind this top banner. They don't really expect people to read through a tiny gap in their images, do they?

Sprint 13y ago
If it makes you feel any better, on my desktop scrolling does not work with neither space, the cursor arrows or the scroll wheel. Another addition for my "don't waste my time" domain block list. The whole content of the post is "I got rejected many times. I added a Mr. before my name. I got accepted many times."

redwood 13y ago

Interestingly, it's not just a case of gender: Rather the uncertainty and its associated cognitive dissonance, leaves a negative feeling in the mind of a reader. There are many other kinds of uncertainty present in a resume; and its always a risky factor because folks like to understand context. Have an ethnic name? Assume people might think you're an immigrant. If you don't want them to assume that: emphasize where you're from, etc. This is good personal branding. Is it unfortunate that you might feel a liability here? yes For example, in my office when someone doesn't show their picture in our email system: I feel negative about them. When they don't show a picture and have a name that makes it difficult to know how to refer to them, I'm doubly-frustrated. Much of this frustration is subconscious but people need to be congnicent of how they come across to others in many contexts. here I choose to be 100% identity neutral, because I can be. But in work this is a big mistake, because formal expectations are applied in correspondence and you need to feel you're meeting those expectations with a job applicant. If you're in this position, you've done yourself a disservice: "Dear Sir or Madam, We are sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you a position" Is this a problem with our society? yes.

cm2012 13y ago

I kind of doubt that this is true. Wouldn't the managers see that she was a female in the interview, and ask why she misrepresented herself or take that opportunity to not hire her?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

niccl 13y ago

This is scary. I go out of my way to remove gender hints from my CV. In particular I use a shortened version of my first name which is slightly more commonly associated with women. And I have had problems finding work recently. Now, do I change things because I need work? I could even pretend it was a bit of research to give a second data point to this story.

vertis 13y ago

Original blog post: http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/h...

Toyama 13y ago

I don't understand what is all the fuss about, when it comes to software developer women in 90% of cases are less efficient than men. (my anecdotal evidence, but also look at github, nobody's stopping women to post open source projects on github) And do you think that for remaining 10% women should be treated equally? Why should I spend more resources looking for women when quality men workers are easier to find? Does my feeling of compassion for the 10% of women who deserve to be hired is enough to compensate for the time I waste on filtering?

amerika 13y ago

If someone wants to hire only people of one gender, what's the harm in that? There are other places to work.

lucb1e 13y ago

Oh my god. I'd seriously write fuck you letters in 72pt bold comic sans ms to all other companies, explaining what dicks they were. Seriously, 4 months of nothing (must have been lots of applications), and then the word "Mr" changes it all? Incredible.

eldude 13y ago

Since this is entirely devoid of any discernible facts, it's a little disturbing that this has made it to the front page of HN. When did random assertions become unquestioned truth? This feels a lot like a sensationalized modern day witch hunt, "Burn the misoginists! Burn the sexists!" Also, for whatever it's worth, never have I heard "Kim" considered anything but a woman's name.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

johnvschmitt 13y ago

As a father, when I had my first kid, & read a few "Parents" magazines, I was so disheartened to see 99% of the references in articles referring to the parent as the "mom" or "She/her". I said, "WTF! Are fathers not parents!?" Then, it hit me. As a male engineer, manager, etc... I just got a very small taste of the less than subtle gender biases that exist all around us. That made me appreciate my wife more (who is also an engineer), and all the others who put up with that crap even in this modern day. This is the only forum I've complained about "Parent's Magazine"'s female gender bias. And, I only do so within a context that shows it's just a lesson in empathy for a much more severe bias in the other direction.

klipt 13y ago
> bias in the other direction No, both biases are in the same direction - "women stay home and parent" and "men go out and work" are two sides of the same coin. By choosing not to fight the stereotype that those parenting are women, you are implicitly shoring up the stereotype that those working are men. Mind blown yet?

nkorth 13y ago

I would love to read this article, but quartz.com is horribly broken in Opera Mobile on my phone... I'll just wait and read it on my laptop, but this does look like a sign of Webkit bringing back the days of sites "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6".

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

Not to negate the point, but I witnessed some MALE gender discrimination when applying to a local IBM office for a college co-op. Ratio of females to males is low in computer programming courses, but 100% of females were interviewed for an IBM position, and 0% of males were interviewed (approx. 6 females and 16 males). This happened twice in back-to-back years. It seems the whole gender discrimination has taken a swing in the opposite direction for this small office - work hard to find female workers over male workers. But I haven't figured if they are doing this because they care about female workers, or they want to boost their public image? Are they giving females a chance to prove themselves to work for IBM, or are they just filling the most menial jobs with females to balance out their gender ratio? This doesn't seem like the "give the job to the person best fit for it" mentality, but maybe to them the "first glance" isn't enough to make that decision. Plus, this was just a co-op, almost anyone in the class could perform the position. I decided to view IBM's actions as a form of tactic to develop female presence in IT industry rather than gender discrimination.

wittysense 13y ago

I got to "ball-busting" then realized the irony. Next.