Gender Based Hiring Quotas in Australia 68

[Hurricanes]

So... I work for a large-ish consultancy in Australia. Recently they have introduced quotas. 50% of new hires must be female. Also, as there is a lack of female representation in senior positions, preference must be given to a female rather than a male when promotion time comes around.

I think this is all a bit backwards and trying too hard. With something like 15-20% of university graduates being female, a 50% minimum hiring rate is asking for trouble IMO.

What are peoples thoughts on this?

 

[TheTick]

Regardless of one's opinion on quotas, the discussion needs to start with acknowledgment of women's disadvantaged position in all parts of the engineering career pipeline: education, job market, career, etc. It's a very real problem. It's impossible to not see.

 

[rb1957]

and so we should enable, encourage women inclined towards STEM to pursue it ... scholarships, grants, etc

The more minorities we feed into the universities, the more graduates we'll get, the more job applicants ...

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[metengr]

Look there are inequalities in life and that is a fact. I try to treat people as I would like to be treated at home and at work, despite being labeled or perceived as an old fart white man engineer, as mentioned above. As for things out of my direct control, I don't dwell on it.

I don't agree with hiring quotas. You hire the best qualified individual. Period.

 

[IRstuff]

Without the successful examples and pull from an actual job market that is obviously in need of, and wants, minorities, what possible motivation is there for a minority middle-schooler to decide on a STEM education? Without someone who has been successful to come back and encourage those middle-schoolers that there is a well-paid job and a viable end to their STEM-directed studies, how are they going to continue on, particularly given the obvious racism and sexism that exists. This also ignores the fact that many schools simply do a crappy job of preparing their graduates for the work force. Even at the high school level, there are schools that boast that 60% of their AP students pass their exams, which is not a particularly sound result, given that they're selective in their admissions, and few, truly poor students attend those schools.

I had thought, while growing up, that the US was well on its way to an egalitarian future, but that future seems even farther out of reach than before. Humans are surprisingly stubborn in maintaining discriminatory views and actions; it's been over 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, and it's been clear from the last 8 years that there are still people that still think of blacks as little more than uppity slaves.

Frankly, the quota is irrelevant, if standards are maintained, then positions will go unfilled, and the situation will correct itself, either by modification of the quota, or paying a premium for those that fulfill the quota. I see the quota as more of realization from the company has recognized that, left to their own devices, their employees are simply unwilling or unable to seek out the minorities covered by the quota. "It's so hard to find..." is a just a childish answer which would never be the response to "Go design this impossibly difficult widget, or structure."

I think that if engineers were to treat this problem as an engineering problem, and apply all this brainpower into finding a solution instead of complaining about it, things might actually get changed.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[waross]

There seems to be a lot of reaction here.
Is there prejudice against women in higher positions? I think that there is.
Should there be less prejudice against women? I think that less prejudice against women is a good thing.
Will there be a "Cloud of estrogen" and stereotypical silly behaviour. Maybe not.
Stereotypes aside, any person who possesses the intelligence and other character traits required to complete a degree in engineering may exhibit a higher standard of behaviour than persons in the secretarial pool or cleaning the floors, or for that matter, persons on the loading dock or cleaning the floors.
Maybe not, and the exceptions may be well divided between the genders.
When we are young we are taught many prejudices. Prejudice is often taught as attitudes and catch phrases.
One of the insidious things about prejudice towards women is that it is taught to women as well as to men.

"If I was a relatively junior male employee then I might be thinking my chances of advancement may be better elsewhere and plan accordingly - your employer may or may not care."
How about the many female employees who have been passed over for no other reason than their gender.

"Simplistically it would also seem that the most important thing should be who is the best candidate, and any preference over gender, race, sexuality, veteran status, age... even with the intent of 'affirmative action' should perhaps be secondary.
I agree."
But if the present pattern is out of balance, it may need a push to bring it into balance.
Note:
New hires shall be 50% female. Promotions shall give preference to women. This may ensure equality of opportunity. In the very few instances where there is a dead heat for a position, the preference will be given to the woman. In all other cases this standard will ensure that no man is given preference based on gender.
But back to the original subject.
Quotas have been established at an establishment.
This is a very small point in history.
History is very long, longer than a piece of string!
When something is seriously unbalanced, as is the representation of women in engineering and higher management levels, an over reaction may be required to restore the balance.
At this point I remember an old supervisor who pleaded with a crew;
"Please do something, even if it is wrong!"
Something is wrong and something has been done, even if it is wrong.
Let's see what happens in a year or two or more in the future.
I hope that as the 50% quota results in the workforce approaching a proportional balance, the quota based restrictions will be somewhat relaxed and there will be more and more exceptions until a fair balance is reached and the quotas fade away.
"Even though it may not be clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should be."

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[BigInch]

When attitudes like this still exist, the quota system may be the only effective way to fix it. If you don't want quotas, change your attitudes. Instead of making pointless statements about if you agree or not, recognize that there is a problem and let's hear some ideas about how to fix it.

metengr, you're up.

 

[MartinLe]

A few questions to those critical of quotas:
What else would be a good way to ensure fair treatment of women after graduation in engineering fields?
How does a fair promotion practice look like?
As a hiring manager, do you activly look for biases in the way you judge candidates? What do you use as 'markers' for soft skills, cultural fit and character in a candidate?
Are equal wages for equal work paid at your specific company, how do you know?
And so.

I think to say "just look at qualification" is a cop out, as qualification is a bundle of a dozen or more skills with little overlap for any typical work and you can't test for all of them.

 

[JNieman]

Now and then I see articles/editorials about NASA's Katherine Johnson and Margaret Hamilton. They discuss the impressive accomplishments each of them made despite the steep uphill climb not required of their male counterparts. Invariably, I see people questioning why we're hearing about these women at all, if it's not just "because they're women" as if that discredits their meritorious career achievements.

Then we have threads like this and I can't help but wonder if the two sentiments are related.

 

[KENAT]

control novice I skimmed through that

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-...

it was interesting reading and delved into a lot of the nuances behind 'women only getting .78 for every $1 a man gets' sound bites. Taking it a face value a very interesting read.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-...[/URL] ]"So, the ones <high paying occupations> that have the smallest difference between male and female earnings with these corrections are the technology occupations and the science occupations and..."

However it was focused on pay not proportion of women in field though that did get touched on.

I still question the assumption (not just here but generally) that any occupation should be expected to be evenly split between men & women and failure to hit that is evidence of discrimination.

However, gross disparities are certainly worth a look and some of the incidents SLTA and others have previously brought up aren't acceptable and should be addressed.

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[BigInch]

Not necessarily related. Generally, whether it be a woman crossing the Pacific, or a man reaching the summit of Mt Everest, or a double amputee, male or female, running in the Olympics, it is not necessarily the gender that is of interest, although that may mulitply the degree of adversity present in some cases, it is the drama of the steep uphill climb that we all paid to see. But in the end, I guess it really depends on how much of a factor the viewer thought gender had to do with the degree of adversity overcome in the story. This thread would suggest that sometimes it matters quite a lot and it also matters more to some than to others.

 

[canwesteng]

I can't wait until we're all replaced by robots and this issue goes away.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Estrogen cloud.

Really.

Why not call it what it really is, an inability or lack of desire from managers to manage. Estrogen cloud, good ole boy, whatever, it is just all uncurbed bad behavior.

A Manager can make almost anything work. A process overseer only sees parts that don't fit together by themselves.

 

[IRstuff]

Sorry, she reads like a shill for "don't worry, be happy; discrimination is a thing of the past" crowd. I don't know where she's looking for evidence, "we don’t have tons of evidence that it’s true discrimination;" she's either not looking particularly hard or her Google-fu is pathetically weak. I think it's a confirmation bias; she made it, so there must not be a problem.

Social scientists routinely report experiments that show men get hired before women, whites before blacks or Hispanics, or even tall, handsome men before short, ugly men. No one, other than the knucklehead that lost his fast food franchise is actually going to admit bias to any survey or questionnaire; they all know what the required responses are, which is also why it's so hard to find pedophiles. We, as a society, have turned these social misfits into chameleons, to the point that some of them might actually believe that they're on the right side of this. The bias are so well hidden that it takes using identical resumes with only the names changed to reveal those bias. Blacks have actually made it easy for discrimination to occur by using names favored by blacks; there's even a website to help them with that:

http://www.top-100-baby-names-search.com/black-baby-names-for-boys.html

Take a look at the top 20 names; not a single one would connote a white male.

The obvious experiment is to hide the name of the applicant on their resumes and see if that changes the interview ratios. Obviously, once face-to-face, their gender or race will be obvious, but they'll have at least made it through the door.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[SLTA]

http://www.se3project.org/full-report.html

The pay difference is real. For me, for my (PhD in nuclear physics) mother, for the women in the other engineering survey results we've previously discussed.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[IRstuff]

I think the article was not disputing the difference, only disputing the root cause.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[KENAT]

The article was discussing the the difference in pay between men & women and it didn't' claim there was no difference.

It did suggest that once various factors are corrected for that in terms of "man & women doing same job at the same level" the pay difference is a lot smaller than headline sound bites often imply.

It then discussed potential factors impacting that remaining difference.

It also touched on the idea of blind auditions for musicians and their impact which is similar to your no name resume idea IRSTUFF.

Also gives a link to the Harvard Economists bio:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/home

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[cranky108]

Here's a theory, "People like to associate with people they see are like their self". For what it's worth, that could be seen as a bad thing, or the making of a well working group.

If you come to a job interview trying to be different, you should be declined in my thinking. If you instead show you can add value to the new company, you should be asked for a second interview.

This just looks too much like social engineering, or trying to force a company to change for some greater good. It's going to be much harder than a natural change.

The question should be, do people want to be hired to meet a quota, or hired because they add value to the company?

 

[btrueblood]

SLTA,

Did your Mom take off time from work when she had you? Did she take time off when you needed care? The point of the posted article is that in some businesses, hours worked, and availability to travel/be away from kids for long periods explained quite a lot of the pay gaps seen.

In our state, it recently became required for businesses to allow family leave, e.g. for expectant mothers and fathers. It was also clear at some companies that I worked, that using such leave pretty much put you on the "mommy/daddy track", and you could expect lower pay raises, male or female, the same way that using all your sick leave, or consistently refusing to work unpaid overtime, etc. would do.

FWIW, my wife graduated a year ahead of me, from the same institution, with the same degree. We ended up working in the same companies for the next 7 or 8 years. Up until her last year of employment (when she was pregnant) she made more money than I did, by about one pay raise cycle. Anecdotal, I know, but it was similar to other DINK couples' experience that we knew. Ok, all of this for aerospace companies where EEO laws and quotas (official or unofficial) were the norm. My wife would object to hiring quotas, as we knew more than a few people who were elevated by such measures to positions where they were way over their heads. I would argue with her that the Peter principle pretty much ensures the same thing regardless of any gender/race/religious/etc. bias.

I like Bill's statement:
At this point I remember an old supervisor who pleaded with a crew;
"Please do something, even if it is wrong!"
Something is wrong and something has been done, even if it is wrong.
Let's see what happens in a year or two or more in the future.

But, also remember that we've had quotas here in the US, with some varying degree of success or failure. And the adage "the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing, expecting a different result" seems to apply.

 

[metengr]

@ BigInch:

metengr, you're up.

Solution; You hire qualified INDIVIDUALS. Second, you correct the pay grade differences for a job classification to ensure equality. Third, by ensuring pay equality you lead the pack and attract talent.

Since I have been classified as a technical individual contributor for my entire career what I say does not mean sh*t to upper management folks. I sleep well at night.

 

[BigInch]

Makes sense.