Can you even avoid affirmative action employers anymore? 79

[WARose]

I had a buddy talk me into applying to the same place he's working....and I take a look at the place later (nothing like looking after you leap)....and in a company that's 90% male....they've got women in just about ALL the lead positions. I know at least 2 of them.....and they are nowhere near as qualified as some of the other people there.

Is there even a way to avoid this now? (Except at the smaller companies.) I am not anti-female in any way....but this sort of thing has resulted in chaos everywhere I've been that had it.

 

[WARose]

The converse is the OP's implication that women in management is innately bad.

Still putting words in people's mouths.

 

[IRstuff]

Just reading your title and your OP

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[WARose]

Just reading your title and your OP

I'd suggest reading all my posts in this thread. I am not saying women in management is "innately bad".....just (in my experience) when they wind up there because they are women. (I.e. AA.)

 

[CWB1]

A look around the engineering community in the US and it's easy to see that it's dominated by white men, and in proportions that don't match the larger demographic of the country. To figure out if that's a problem, we have to try to figure out why it happened.

The problem with studying demographics stateside is that most of the US isn't really as diverse as the media would have us believe. Their favorite region to forget, rural America not only represents the overwhelming majority of the US geographically but also seriously skews the statistics by nature of the fact that caucasian males are the overwhelming majority of the workforce in those areas. One of the funnier experiences with AA I have witnessed was a HR head informing us that caucasian males wouldn't be hired until we had met her "diversity and inclusion" goal. Then living in a fairly small midwest town a few hours from nothing, that meant we didn't hire anyone for a few months until the goal was abandoned bc there was effectively no one else to hire.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Note that I was born and raised in a town in Northern Michigan with less than 900 people and the closest town over a 1,000 was 32 miles away and it only had a population of about 3,000 (the county we lived in had just over 4,000 residents). When I was in the 8th grade, there were only six kids in my class, we had to take a bus 18 miles to the county high school where there were 30 students in my class. It wasn't until I went to engineering school that I resided in a town larger than 5,000. And that's also the first time I ever interacted with anyone who could be described as a member of a racial minority (our town did have a small community of Finnish immigrants) and even then, most of those were foreign students.

I'm just saying this so that you know that I'm aware of the make-up of so-called rural America.

That being said, while I might agree with much of what you alluded to about the 'diversity' of much of the country, you still have to admit that the difference in population numbers between urban and rural America is significant and must be acknowledged for what it is, a factor of nearly 5:1

https://www.statista.com/statistics/985183/size-urban-rural-population-us/

It would be wrong to gauge an approach for addressing solutions to inequity in the nation by focusing on anecdotal stories of how things don't work in what you describe as "the overwhelming majority of the US geographically". What about the overwhelming majority of the population of the US? What about them?

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[CWB1]

Nonsense. Recognizing the impact of rural demographics on national statistics doesn't mean that someone is ignoring another portion of the population, quite the opposite in fact. Treating the US like one large homogeneous population OTOH is somewhere between dishonest and ignorant.

 

[IRstuff]

Treating the US like one large homogeneous population OTOH is somewhere between dishonest and ignorant.

And that's likely the kind of same argument proffered by segregationists. And, it's not inconceivable that some companies move to rural areas specifically to avoid having to hire non-whites and to only hire like-minded people. That's already been evident in the so-called "white-flight" that started with whites moving out from the cities into suburbs and redlining out minorities; when that failed, the white-flight was toward white-majority towns and states.

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[271828]

...Considering that it took over 100 years after women got the right to vote that we even have a woman vice president, we are easily a century away from being able to assert anything significant about true "innate differences."

To avoid putting words in your mouth, I'll ask a question:

What is the reason behind the lack of female VP or president? If you think there are multiple reasons, which reasons do you think are dominant?

 

[IRstuff]

I can only guess at some of the reasons
> men are "leaders"
> one heartbeat away
> potentially hysterical
> too emotional

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[271828]

I can only guess at some of the reasons
> men are "leaders"
> one heartbeat away
> potentially hysterical
> too emotional

I'm not sure if you are saying:

#1 you think those four statements are true (I don't understand the second one.) and those deficiencies are your guesses why there have been no female VPs or presidents.

or

#2 you're guessing that men erroneously think those are true and thus prevent women from becoming VPs ro presidents.

 

[IRstuff]

the latter, of course; there are other reasons

https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/how-geraldine-ferraro-was-treated-as-a-female-vp-candidate.html

The second bullet item has, admittedly, been applied to male VP candidates as well, i.e., they are one heartbeat, or lack thereof, from becoming president; so the question is posed as whether we can tolerate a woman VP, but not possibly one that gets to the presidency because their running mate dies in office.


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[hokie66]

We should be happy and celebrate the difference between the sexes, rather than seek homogenization. What we should not celebrate is selection totally based on sex or race, as was the case with VP Harris.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And you think that past VP's were NOT "totally based on sex and race", eh?

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[hokie66]

Yes, I do. They were based on ability, and sometimes geography. Geography was obviously not a consideration for Harris, as there was no question about California being the most liberal state.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I honestly didn't think you were that naive. I mean, in over 200 hundred years we've only had ONE VP who wasn't male and ONE who was not White. Spot a trend anyone...

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EX-'Product Evangelist'
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[hokie66]

The main issue is selection of VP candidate, not election thereof. So this is the third woman in recent times, by the major parties. My answer to your conclusion is that women must be smarter than men. Who would want the job?

 

[spieng89]

...and this thread is exactly why thoughtful hiring considerations are required. I'd never want to work under OP or those with that thought process. It's limiting and destructive. In fact, I go out of my way to look into potential employers diversity. Given my my alma maters most recent graduating class was over 40% female and highest POC representation ever (on par with US demographic numbers, large state university), there really is no excuse for a firm nowadays to not be moving in the correct direction.

I had a buddy talk me into applying to the same place he's working....and I take a look at the place later (nothing like looking after you leap)....and in a company that's 90% male....they've got women in just about ALL the lead positions. I know at least 2 of them.....and they are nowhere near as qualified as some of the other people there.

Is there even a way to avoid this now? (Except at the smaller companies.) I am not anti-female in any way....but this sort of thing has resulted in chaos everywhere I've been that had it.

How do you think women and POC's feel when they see ALL white males in lead positions in 2021? This might be one of the most ignorant sentences I've read on eng-tips along with other supporters of your statements. Glad your kind are slowing moving out of the work force.

 

[phamENG]

Enable - thanks for speaking up for me. 27128, he summed it up for me pretty succinctly (I was off enjoying my long weekend and staying off the internet as much as possible). I don't think we should ignore innate differences - I think we should embrace them. I just don't think we should declare that the trends of the last several decades are positive indicators of what those differences are. Your question regarding dismissing innate differences...I don't see them in terms of math and science. The state of mathematics education is the US is so awful it's hard to tell who's good at it and who would truly excel. The most brilliant mathematicians I've known have been women. Last I heard, a good friend from high school as a PhD in mathematics and is leading a team doing some sort of predictive modeling for the defense department. This is anecdotal, of course, but most of my limited experiences have busted a lot of those ideas. You mention several decades of encouragement to counter my point, but then you bring up colleges and employers. My whole point is that it's too late at that point. It has to start earlier. The kids who don't finish high school or graduate with terrible grades and no direction are already lost to that system's efforts.

I don't think inclusiveness and diversity is really a hot issue - with the exception of racists and sexists, I don't think anyone advocates actively excluding women and minorities from anything, and they're pretty rare (though some do have really big megaphones). I think the most contentious point is where the line is drawn. Do we declare it a victory when we pass laws saying you can't discriminate? Some people think so, and that's where most of the current resistance is coming from. We said you can't do it, and that's enough, so why all the ruckus? Or, do we declare victory when all of the social and economic barriers that were put in place over many decades or even centuries are removed? After all, we can no more pass legislation converting everyone in the country to a particular religion than we can pass legislation that makes everyone in the country accepting of women and color in the work place regardless of their qualifications.

Is the endgame of diversity to force there to be no underrepresented groups in any position?

Does the quest for diversity include careers that currently have a lot more females, such as nursing and child care?

Does it include all sports?

Does it include parameters other than sex and race? How about height in the NBA or size in the NFL?

Does it include making sure poor areas such as parts of the southeast and Appalachia equally represented in academia and in corporate board rooms?

I assume the answer to each of those is "no." In that case, are there valid criteria for selecting which fields get leveled?

1) No, but this feels like a reductio ad absurdum to me. Of course we're not going to create a statistically neutral world.
2) Sure. If more men want to work in those positions and feel they aren't be allowed to because they're men, they should speak up.
3)/4) If they can perform, I have no problem letting them play.
5) By this do you mean we should drive around and pick people from a hillside hovel to teach college courses and run businesses? No. But what we should do is make sure those places have the resources to encourage the children living there - and the adults if they're able - to learn something and do something that will improve their lot in life. Assuming, of course, they want to. I don't live far from there, and I've met a few folks up that way who are happy just as they are.

I never advocated leveling a field. I just want everyone to have genuine access to whichever one they choose to play on. If you read some of my earlier posts, I don't like affirmative action. I think the goal is admirable, but the execution is terribly flawed. If AA gets somebody an interview that they wouldn't have received otherwise, that's great. But if they aren't the best candidate for the job, they shouldn't get it. So in some ways I agree with what I think WARose is really frustrated about - companies playing the quotas game and ending up with people in positions where they don't belong.

 

[IRstuff]

PhamENG, I don't disagree with starting earlier, but it requires a complete path; you can prime the pump (start earlier) but if there's nowhere to go, that's a huge discouragement. Most people are not diehards, so given the apparent atmosphere of sexism and racism down the road, why bother to try at all?

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[WARose]

How do you think women and POC's feel when they see ALL white males in lead positions in 2021? This might be one of the most ignorant sentences I've read on eng-tips along with other supporters of your statements. Glad your kind are slowing moving out of the work force.

Speaking of ignorant statements: in a profession dominated by men (in the neighborhood of 80-90%, despite whatever your alma mater graduated recently).....does it make any sense to have a set of all-female leads? If you think that happened by their capabilities: you are fooling yourself.