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?

 

[kacarrol]

Panther140, I completely agree that men should be encouraged to go into nursing and other female dominated professions. I find it distressing that there are no men in daycares, what message does this send to children? That only women are caring individuals? Although I believe that the issue of men entering nursing is actually coming more to the forefront, certainly I've heard several radio stories addressing the issue, and there is research money being put toward studying the problem (

http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/374-men-in-nursing.html)

Everyone has bias, and one way or another we need to work through them and get rid of them. The classical music industry was able to do that by having auditioning musicians play from behind a screen, they had to go so far as to make the musicians take off their shoes (because women tended to wear heels, which was a give away). After those great lengths they ended up with pretty much a 50/50 mix of men and women, before that it was skewed towards men.

I do not think that quotas is a perfect answer, but it seems to at least help the situation. Until we as a society have fully obliterated biases we need to force ourselves in some way to confront them and we need crutches (quotas or some other mechanism) to help break past the barrier, whether it's men or women who are up against that barrier.

But in order to fix a problem you have to first admit there is a problem. I challenge you to seek out your own biases, recognize them and then think about them for a few moments. It takes a little practice but after a while you get better at it. Think of it as a self science experiment.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Not to be a huge proponent quotas but there is a lot of places where you could have a 50/50 hiring practice and it may take decades to reach a 50/50 ratio or maybe a decade to reach 20/80, the ratio in universities. I doubt a 50/50 policy is meant to be a long term thing but maybe more so a policy to quickly bring things back in line. When Exxon pays female engineers more than male. I am guessing they see value in diversifying the workforce and are willing to spend more money to more quickly change their demographics with quality candidates.

 

[cranky108]

Panther, my comment on group-think was in reference to a company that hires mostly people from one university. Your comment about sounding sexist is offencive in that aspect.

So don't be so PC until you know the facts. Your bias is showing.

And that's the issue, everyone has a bias and is likely to favor people they believe will make things work.

The other side of it is, in small groups, it is hard to have a good mix of anything. But easy to point out that the group is not fairly mixed.

The people who answer the phones are mostly women, while the people who climb electric poles are mostly men. So what? Is it important to fix, and do we need to fix it?
Why is engineering important to fix? Because it pays well?

I don't have a bias (that I can see), but I do see the double standard with other industries.

 

[IRstuff]

Anecdotal, but interesting nevertheless, example of typical biases against women:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/happened-man-woman-swapped-names-154706743.html

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[FoxRox]

IRstuff, I'd say that article borders on not being anecdotal. It sounds like there were multiple examples of hardship for the one using the female name. They basically conducted a small study.

However, I think we've all (mostly) already agreed that sexism exists in the workplace. The question posed in this thread is whether legalized, policy-driven, institutional "reverse" sexism is a right and just way to mitigate cultural and individual sexism.

I hold that such policies are antithetical to the progress made over the last 50+ years of removing discriminatory laws from the books, criminalizing discrimination, and moving the culture in the direction of anti-discrimination. What message does it send if we say: "Discrimination is a good thing, as long as it's against the right people." ??

 

[Jobst]

That sort of boils down to whether people are aiming for "equality of opportunity" or "equality of outcome".

I've noticed that certain groups pay a lot of lip service about providing the former, while ignoring or refusing to believe that a lot of systemic biases still exist that prevents the latter from happening. It's all about the means (or at least signalling the means...) and let the outcome be the outcome (which often happens to be more status quo).

Whereas the example given in the original post is very much in the latter camp- are there enough qualified female engineers around to ensure that all new hires are made in at least a 50/50 ratio? The company certainly appears to think so, so they are directly requiring that the outcome be achieved, regardless of how it's done.

There's been study after study that confirms it's incredibly hard to remove all bias from hiring practice- most people aren't even aware it's there. Yet as we see from the article above, put a female name on your resume and suddenly life gets a lot harder, despite most people being involved at least claiming not to be biased. So how do you expect to know that you've ever achieved equality of opportunity?

 

[JohnRBaker]

For what it's worth, here's an item of interest to the conversation, and there's even an Australian reference:

High-Paying Job Listings Are Written To Attract Men, Study Finds

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...s_58c990b7e4b0be71dcf100f7?95yb0fgu253eah5mi&

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[controlnovice]

Huffington Post is not the place to go for honest discussion about diversity:

HuffPo Editors' Diversity




______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[SLTA]

Oh, right. We should only listen to the all-white all-male editorial boards of most other news sources. Whoopsies.

And, as far as gender diversity - take a guess what the percent of female membership is here on Eng-Tips. Just guess.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[cranky108]

So how would you know a posters gender if it were not reported, or stated anywhere?

I agree HuffPo is likely biased, just like the all-white-all-male editorial boards you talk about. So what do you suggest?
If you don't have a reasonable unbiased suggestion, then we just have to live with this divide in news reporting.

The problem we face here is some of the managers don't understand the issue of engineering profession diversity. And I don't do well with water pipe.
But more to the point the difference in pay scale between Mechanical, Chemical, Civil, and Electrical (Power systems, or Electronics). That there is a shortage of Electrical (Power systems) engineers, and an abundance of Mechanical engineers (those that deal with water pipes).

In addition we seem to promote from within, rather than to hire more qualified people from outside (in some areas outside of power systems). And the problem is very few women apply for those starting positions in the first place to move up the ladder, so to speak.

So to me diversity is a bad smelling flower that people seem to make from whatever view they have.

 

[IRstuff]

" And the problem is very few women apply for those starting positions in the first place to move up the ladder, so to speak."

From a point in grade school and middle school when females excel at math and science, the numbers drastically dwindle by the time they're in high school. That's largely cultural, so all the gender-neutrality in laws doesn't do squat to fix that. Seat belts were in the same cultural boat, until it became illegal to not wear them. My kids actually get uncomfortable when not wearing seat belts.

The downside, of course, is that if we did get female representation higher in previously male-dominated bastions like engineering, our salaries are going to take hit as well, as there'll (hopefully) twice as many applicants in the pool.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[SLTA]

As one of the only "out" females on here, I've had some discussions with the powers that be around women in engineering and how to get more of us involved. Clearly, I only speak for myself, but I'm one of the few who speak up.

Turns out there are lots of tracking ways to know all about people - and there are fewer than 10% women on here. Interesting.

And I'm not saying don't listen to men - I'm saying don't rule out a website because it's only run by women.



Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[JNieman]

Relevant analogy:

“So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

I find it hard to argue with that. If I never thought there was a problem when there were nine men, something is amiss if the thought of nine women causes concern. If people are appointed based upon qualifications, and at some point it ends up being nine women, protesting the situation, while never showing concern over nine men, would be obviously sexist. It shows the assumption that it's "normal" if men dominate something, but abnormal if women do.

So why would you question or criticize Huffington Post for having such a female-heavy staff?

I personally dislike reading HuffPo for entirely content related reasons. I've read plenty of well written articles on there. But when it comes to only having so much time to read the news, they don't make the cut. The reasons are -far- from having to do with their staff demographics, though. But to say that BECAUSE of the demographics of their staff, they are a lesser organization, is terrible. You should dislike them because they EARNED your ire Not because they're led by women.

 

[JohnRBaker]

When I started engineering school (mid-60's) the student male/female ratio at our "Technological University" was 28:1. The irony was that when it came to the faculty, the ratio was much more "enlightened", perhaps closer to 16:1. Today the student ratio is something like 5:1, but the faculty ratio is more like 8:1.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[MikeHalloran]

My school was founded by a pair of sisters in memory of their brother.
My class had zero females.
The next class had, I think, four, two of whom were nuns.
The ratio is much less inequal now.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[cranky108]

When applying to the law, one could argue that it should be fair, and male/female ratio does not matter. But one could also argue males and females have different view points.

Same in engineering. So which is the correct ratio?

I was not aware the HuffPo was run by women, I just thought of it as very left wing.

 

[FoxRox]

Anyone care to weigh in on whether this Australian company's policy would be legal in the US? Based on some brief research, I would say no, but I am certainly no lawyer. Grutter vs. Bollinger is precedent for affirmative action but against "quotas" specifically.

Also, I am curious as to where people fall on the following questions. I'm not trying to trap anyone in a logical paradox. I just want to know how everyone is thinking, that I might empathize. Feel free to elaborate.

- Discrimination is wrong. Agree or disagree?
- Sexism is wrong. Agree or disagree?
- Discrimination based on sex occurs in the workplace on an institutional (official) level. Agree or disagree?
- Discrimination based on sex occurs in the workplace on a cultural and individual level. Agree or disagree?
- Laws and/or policies that discriminate based on sex are wrong. Agree or disagree?

 

[JNieman]

- Discrimination is wrong. Agree or disagree?

Discrimination comes in many forms. Some's ok. If we're still talking about sex/gender, then yes, it's wrong for any job where the sex is not directly tied to the actual job duties.

- Sexism is wrong. Agree or disagree?

Agree

- Discrimination based on sex occurs in the workplace on an institutional (official) level. Agree or disagree?

Agree, overall.

- Discrimination based on sex occurs in the workplace on a cultural and individual level. Agree or disagree?

Agree, overall. No one is immune, imo.

- Laws and/or policies that discriminate based on sex are wrong. Agree or disagree?

Would have to address on a case by case basis. Policies that seek to promote opportunity where it was previously unjustly limited/deprived... I'm ok with, overall.

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, those are all great principles, if everything was on an even keel already.

But, that's hardly the current situation, and hardly ever been the situation. So, let's say you have a demographic that's been and is culturally downtrodden, demoralized, and has poor representation. And let's say that these principles are enshrined and agreed upon, but it turns out that everyone has hidden or latent biases, or even not so hidden or latent. How would these principles, by themselves, address the situation? When those in power are the demographic that benefits from the current situation, are these principles enough to reverse centuries or even millenia of oppression?

in some sense, what's actually needed is some sort of brain alignment process where everyone can get their biases removed. Short of that, I don't see that simply saying that we've made everything color-blind, or gender-blind actually does anything except absolve us of doing the hard work of actually fixing things.



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[ProEpro]

My job would actually be better done buy a woman. Why? Because they are the main customer of the product. However, I don't think we can actually try and recruit one directly...

The chemical fields seem to be more popular with women for some reason (and they have defiantly done well there).

It is ironic that the first computer programmers were women.