Random A place to have long, boring and annoying conversations with unlikable people

[stretcharmstrong]

Rubbish. Evidence? Companies like making money and they like competent employees.



So you're admittedly sexist, not that it really needed to be stated outright. Amazing how women are so capable yet need so much assistance to compete against these less competent men. The only way that mess of a thought could possibly make sense in your mind is if you assume that men must be horribly biased towards men and shutting women out.



You're right, its not a level playing field. Women are given more scholarships, more support services and preferential hiring for roles. They benefit from the "women are wonderful" effect that you're clearly a proud exponent of. You point to some studies, I can point to other studies that show that women have a strong in-group preference for women and that men are far more equal in their treatment between the sexes. Most studies are a waste of time and effort to read because a lot of them are drummed up by people who already have their conclusions mapped out. Far preferable to stick to logic and reasoning in these cases.



Women have had the red carpet rolled out for them in STEM fields for decades. They are a greatly desired demographic despite the fact that there is nothing inherently special about being a man or a woman. I laugh at this idea that they're being discouraged - is the university entrance ranking system designed to weed women out of engineering courses? Are there bouncers at career fairs stopping women from talking to people at certain stands? No, as usual, the only people stopping women from entering these fields are the women who choose not to pursue these courses. Yet again, go look up the STEM field gender splits in the Scandinavian countries which are widely acknowledged as the most "gender equitable" countries in the world. The split in the carer's fields and the engineering fields is more extreme than most other countries around the world because people are free to choose what they'd like to do. Or is Pakistan a more woman-friendly country according to your line of thinking?



No ****. Would you be okay with a company stating they're only going to hire men as long as they were up front about it?



Yes, its called equality of opportunity. Anyone can apply for a position and the people in charge of hiring examine their qualifications to determine the best candidate and offer that person the job. Crazy, I know, but if you want the best person for the job, it makes sense.

Why does the plumbing of the person applying for the position matter? Either men and women are equal and there shouldn't be any discrimination between the two, or they're not equal and therefore it is fine to discriminate along the lines of those differences in the same way you'd prefer to hire someone with 20 years of experience over someone with 6 months experience.


You've really bought into and swallowed the rhetoric here. Why are you so gullible when it comes to supporting such clear bias?

I’ve only read as far as this post, so far, and I’m more swayed by your arguments overall.

But I have a question for you - did sexism/sexual discrimination against women ever exist in a prevalent way in the corporate world, in your opinion? Were women ever shut out of certain fields (i.e. discriminated against by hiring managers)?

If your answer is yes to the above, here’s a follow up question - when did it end, when was it completely fixed?

 

[Cannon82]

I’ve only read as far as this post, so far, and I’m more swayed by your arguments overall.

But I have a question for you - did sexism/sexual discrimination against women ever exist in a prevalent way in the corporate world, in your opinion? Were women ever shut out of certain fields (i.e. discriminated against by hiring managers)?

If your answer is yes to the above, here’s a follow up question - when did it end, when was it completely fixed?

I imagine it did, but we get the airbrushed version of events these days. How do you know what you're reading is accurate? This is why I much prefer to look at something in terms of logic rather than point at a bunch of most likely biased sources. Plenty of people claim they're discriminated against, but how many of those cases are actually true or just a means for someone to shrug off rejection? Bit of an odd question, though. If you're asking me if women have been shut out of certain fields: don't know, you'd have to speak to people who hire in whatever field you're curious about. There have certainly been women in just about all fields despite whatever barriers to entry were in place, but I'd imagine these same barriers were also in place for plenty of men (ie getting into certain educational institutions was a financial issue - just attending university however many years ago meant that you were a "scholar and a gentleman"). One of the things that irks me about all these arguments that women have been oppressed, held back, etc is that this is compared to the elite 1% of men, not the average man. So in a nutshell, I don't really know and I certainly don't claim to be in the know. I also don't care. People who were discriminated against in the past won't see any reparations for what happened, just like the men who are being discriminated against now won't receive any benefit either. Just fix the system and make it fair now.

You'll also have to define "completely fixed". I think everyone being in the same boat in terms of laws and legislation and being treated equally is "fixed", but clearly people have other views. You can fix a system to make it equal for everyone, but it takes quite a while for the system to shift. When a person's career lasts around 40 to 50 years, that's likely how long it will be before the full effects of the changes will be felt. These artificial forces on the system (ie preferential hiring etc) are trying to force that system to reach that "equilibrium" point more quickly, but to my mind it just causes further damage to individuals trying to reach that goal, and at the cost of actual competency in that field. To me, you can't fix the past but you can set things right going forward. Past grievances and compensation should be settled case by case... not that it will, I'd imagine, but I don't see how justifying rewarding a completely different person for wrongs committed against someone makes any sense whatsoever. Back to your point, there will be people who have their own biases, sure, but I don't see a workaround for that, and in any case I think if you look at the rhetoric being spouted and the push to get women into certain fields, the bias is far more likely to be towards women than against them. After all, we're only talking about gender splits in highly desirable fields - I've not seen anyone look at construction labourers, plumbers, welders, coal miners, truck drivers etc and suggest that those fields need more women in them.

Might be a bit waffley and disjointed, I jumped around a bit there. Perhaps I'd be better off stating that I think a "fixed" system to me would be one where people don't talk about the gender, ethnicity, etc of the candidates and purely about their competency to carry out a job. If the candidate pool happens to be 95% male for that job... what of it?

 

[Johnny Karate]

Really not as controversial as it should be. Restricting the applicable pool of candidates for a position is highly likely to result in a weaker candidate being selected for that position. Strange when someone's ability to do the job they're being hired for becomes a sidenote in the hiring process.

I suppose in some cases the reason that affirmative action might be used in a hiring process is that there are plenty of qualified candidates of a certain demographic who miss out time and time again.

I’m pretty sure we agree that hiring someone on the basis of their sex/ethnicity etc alone is pretty pointless.

However, I can see why the South African cricket team had ethnicity quotas in an effort to get more people rather than just the minority white population interested in playing, watching and sponsoring the game. I can also see why the ALP attempts to have equal representation of men and women in roles because they are making an effort to be representative of the wider population which is approximately 50/50 male/female.

I can get behind diversity of thought and experience being good for an organisation, but diversity as an end to itself is shallow and pointless. The only way someone can look at an organisation populated by predominantly white males and describe it as a "monoculture" is if they assume all white men are the same. I've heard a few people push this idea that diverse teams are stronger teams, not realizing that the meaning of diversity in this case doesn't mean ethnicity, gender, etc but actual diversity of skills, experience and thought processes. Its like when certain people say we should be giving people of certain ethnicity, gender, etc special privileges because they're worse off than the average person in terms of income, education, opportunities, etc. If that was the case, why not target poor people and give them additional privileges rather than discriminating along arbitrary lines such as gender or ethnicity?

I definitely have a problem with stereotyping. Terms such as “white male privilege” are unhelpful. I also agree that just because two individuals share the same gender and ethnicity doesn’t mean they have the same worldview, experience or skills.

I can also get behind the idea of a meritocracy but there are certain instances where meritocracy breaks down. For example, my wife works as a Client Relationship Manager for a financial planning firm. She is just as (and in some cases more) qualified academically than the advisors she works underneath. Almost all of these advisors and the hr come from a fairly narrow pool of ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. My wife and others have attempted to go for roles and lost out, generally in line ball calls but have lost out to ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. The result is that out of 28 advisors, 25 fit the above demographic. It’s not because they are sexist pigs or blind followers of the patriarchy but inevitably they hire people like them. But who knows? Maybe ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men broadly make fantastic financial advisors? In this business they are great at drumming up new business but not at keeping it. They also have huge staff turnover because people who feel there is a glass ceiling become despondent and leave, there are also issues of low workplace morale because of the joshing around about women, homosexuals, different ethnicities that occurs because employees who may represent such groups don’t feel comfortable with it nor do they feel comfortable raising it, because the people they might complain about are either those who do or friends with those who do it. In my opinion this business would do well to at least attempt to create some further balance.

I also happen to think that affirmative action could potentially be useful in trying to get more men into early childhood education and teaching as well as nursing. Providing pathways for Aboriginal people to become police in their communities doesn’t seem an awful idea to me either.

TLDR: I give affirmative action qualified support in cases where it may be required. I also acknowledge the philosophical conundrum of curing discrimination and stereotyping with another form of discrimination and stereotyping. Ideally candidates for jobs should be solely chosen on merit and I agree that diversity for diversity’s sake isn’t justifiable.

 

[Cannon82]

I suppose in some cases the reason that affirmative action might be used in a hiring process is that there are plenty of qualified candidates of a certain demographic who miss out time and time again.

I’m pretty sure we agree that hiring someone on the basis of their sex/ethnicity etc alone is pretty pointless.

However, I can see why the South African cricket team had ethnicity quotas in an effort to get more people rather than just the minority white population interested in playing, watching and sponsoring the game. I can also see why the ALP attempts to have equal representation of men and women in roles because they are making an effort to be representative of the wider population which is approximately 50/50 male/female.

I still disagree with it in those cases. Looking for the most qualified candidate or a barely qualified candidate of a certain skin colour or gender. It still relegates someone's capability to do a job to a secondary consideration when that should be the only consideration in play. Does it matter if someone gets passed over time and time again? I've been through a huge number of job application / interviews over the years and been knocked back more times than I can count. Is that something that needs to be addressed through preferential hiring or do I need to lift my game at job interviews and accept that there were better candidates available?

The South African cricket team (and Souh Africa in general) has lost plenty of talent due to the quota system. There's a reason so many good Bok players ended up playing for England (and a few other countries), and there are a large number of Kolpak players floating around county cricket who turned their back on their country. There are a lot of South Africans at the company I currently work at and also the last job I had; all left because of what was happening in SA. The highly skilled people who could get a job elsewhere, did, and left the place in poorer shape because of it.

I don't see what representing your electorate has to do with your sex. Probably a pointless discussion to have as I've got a fairly cynical view on politicians, but they're there to act in the interests of their constituents. If an electorate of 99% men (hypothetically, clearly) vote a woman in to represent them, why does that matter as long as they do what they promised to do (which they rarely do)?

I definitely have a problem with stereotyping. Terms such as “white male privilege” are unhelpful. I also agree that just because two individuals share the same gender and ethnicity doesn’t mean they have the same worldview, experience or skills.

I can also get behind the idea of a meritocracy but there are certain instances where meritocracy breaks down. For example, my wife works as a Client Relationship Manager for a financial planning firm. She is just as (and in some cases more) qualified academically than the advisors she works underneath. Almost all of these advisors and the hr come from a fairly narrow pool of ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. My wife and others have attempted to go for roles and lost out, generally in line ball calls but have lost out to ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. The result is that out of 28 advisors, 25 fit the above demographic. It’s not because they are sexist pigs or blind followers of the patriarchy but inevitably they hire people like them. But who knows? Maybe ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men broadly make fantastic financial advisors? In this business they are great at drumming up new business but not at keeping it. They also have huge staff turnover because people who feel there is a glass ceiling become despondent and leave, there are also issues of low workplace morale because of the joshing around about women, homosexuals, different ethnicities that occurs because employees who may represent such groups don’t feel comfortable with it nor do they feel comfortable raising it, because the people they might complain about are either those who do or friends with those who do it. In my opinion this business would do well to at least attempt to create some further balance.

I also happen to think that affirmative action could potentially be useful in trying to get more men into early childhood education and teaching as well as nursing. Providing pathways for Aboriginal people to become police in their communities doesn’t seem an awful idea to me either.

TLDR: I give affirmative action qualified support in cases where it may be required. I also acknowledge the philosophical conundrum of curing discrimination and stereotyping with another form of discrimination and stereotyping. Ideally candidates for jobs should be solely chosen on merit and I agree that diversity for diversity’s sake isn’t justifiable.

Interesting example. Nepotism plays a big role, although the professional term for that is "networking", which we're all encouraged to do. I've gotten most of my jobs over the years because I knew people at the company I was applying at or I'd been tapped up for a role. Think my current job is the only one of the 10 or so serious positions I've had over the years where I didn't know someone on the inside. I'd like to think someone knowing you and how you work reduces the amount of risk involved in selecting a candidate for a position, but I also don't know who else applied for these jobs or how qualified they were. Not much I can say about your example other than if your wife thinks people are being discriminated against, sexism, homophobia, etc, then there should be ways to report it (anonymously?). Easy thing to say, but things won't change if people just go along with it.

A point I made in another post was that you can't do much about an individual's bias, and I certainly don't think we should be bringing in quotas / preferential hiring in a state / industry / country etc just to tackle what a small number of people are doing. The second part of your paragraph - I'd imagine these same feelings would be felt as well if the company decided to implement affirmative action policies.

As a corresponding TL;DR: discrimination is bad, affirmative action (AKA "positive" discrimination) is also bad, and attempting to use one form of discrimination to combat another just results in more people being discriminated against. Its a blanket no to that sort of thing from me.

 

[Johnny Karate]

I still disagree with it in those cases. Looking for the most qualified candidate or a barely qualified candidate of a certain skin colour or gender. It still relegates someone's capability to do a job to a secondary consideration when that should be the only consideration in play. Does it matter if someone gets passed over time and time again? I've been through a huge number of job application / interviews over the years and been knocked back more times than I can count. Is that something that needs to be addressed through preferential hiring or do I need to lift my game at job interviews and accept that there were better candidates available?

Ideally in all jobs the best qualified candidate should be selected. However, I guess I can see how things can become unbalanced and a workplace can be filled with people who are not necessarily better qualified through the ‘meritocracy’ resulting in a bit of monoculture developing. Suffice to say, the ideal scenario rather than positive discrimination would be to have a throughly professional recruitment process where everyone regardless of age, (dis)ability, sex, sexuality etc was assessed fairly.

I obviously don’t know your circumstances but if hypothetically you were more than qualified for a job and had slightly better credentials than a rival candidate but the hr person decided to go with the other candidate because they were able bodied and you were not and you would require the organisation to fork out for infrastructure to make your job easier, that would suck. The above hypothetical is the flip side to positive discrimination where individuals who are qualified get overlooked for things that have little to with their ability to do a job.

The South African cricket team (and Souh Africa in general) has lost plenty of talent due to the quota system. There's a reason so many good Bok players ended up playing for England (and a few other countries), and there are a large number of Kolpak players floating around county cricket who turned their back on their country. There are a lot of South Africans at the company I currently work at and also the last job I had; all left because of what was happening in SA. The highly skilled people who could get a job elsewhere, did, and left the place in poorer shape because of it.

I can’t comment with great knowledge on other industries in the RSA other than to say that not all outcomes of affirmative action have been good. With the cricket team, I’m aware that it has probably cost them Kevin Pietersen and there are definitely a lot of white South Africans kicking around the county setup (although Colin Ingram/Kyle Abbott is more about money than quotas I would think). It’s possibly a Schrodinger’s Cat scenario but I don’t look at Rabada, Amla, Ngidi, Pheklawayo, Imran Tahir and Philander and think their team is missing out on white South Africans who are better. I’d hazard to guess if it weren’t for players like Herschelle Gibbs, Ashwell Price, Makhya Ntini etc that the other aforementioned players may have never picked up a bat or ball.

I don't see what representing your electorate has to do with your sex. Probably a pointless discussion to have as I've got a fairly cynical view on politicians, but they're there to act in the interests of their constituents. If an electorate of 99% men (hypothetically, clearly) vote a woman in to represent them, why does that matter as long as they do what they promised to do (which they rarely do)?

From a base level, I agree, however, looking at it from the perspective to do with public policy decisions even representation can at least give the perspective of women a voice at the table. I’m happy to disagree but I find it hard to believe having Tony Abbott making decisions on access to abortion drugs as Health Minister or him being Minister for Women because the only other woman in cabinet was Foreign Minister were ideal outcomes in government.

Interesting example. Nepotism plays a big role, although the professional term for that is "networking", which we're all encouraged to do. I've gotten most of my jobs over the years because I knew people at the company I was applying at or I'd been tapped up for a role. Think my current job is the only one of the 10 or so serious positions I've had over the years where I didn't know someone on the inside. I'd like to think someone knowing you and how you work reduces the amount of risk involved in selecting a candidate for a position, but I also don't know who else applied for these jobs or how qualified they were. Not much I can say about your example other than if your wife thinks people are being discriminated against, sexism, homophobia, etc, then there should be ways to report it (anonymously?). Easy thing to say, but things won't change if people just go along with it.

Yeah nepotism and networking are facts of life but the issue is if these decisions are made en masse and repeated time and time again you end up with a workforce that is chosen less on merit and more on who you know, what school you went to etc. A valid criticism of affirmative action is that you may be overlooking more qualified candidates based on factors that are not to do with job competency. Nepotism is the same in my opinion.

Reporting issues in a workplace can be tough. She doesn’t believe that these people joking around are terrible people or intending to be racist, homophobic etc. There are staff surveys where issues can be raised anonymously but nothing ever gets enacted upon.

A point I made in another post was that you can't do much about an individual's bias, and I certainly don't think we should be bringing in quotas / preferential hiring in a state / industry / country etc just to tackle what a small number of people are doing. The second part of your paragraph - I'd imagine these same feelings would be felt as well if the company decided to implement affirmative action policies.

I’m not araldited to positive discrimination apart from it being a possible solution, very carefully applied as a temporary measure in certain circumstances.

I’m strongly of the view that there should be more male teachers at an early childhood education level. Positive discrimination could be a way of achieving that, although there would need to be more science behind it than rounding up blokes from a local nightclub or off the street. The benefits would be children and young people having more male role models throughout their early development and boys could see teaching as a potential profession rather something women and girls do.

As a corresponding TL;DR: discrimination is bad, affirmative action (AKA "positive" discrimination) is also bad, and attempting to use one form of discrimination to combat another just results in more people being discriminated against. Its a blanket no to that sort of thing from me.

Yeah, I definitely get the point of two wrongs don’t make a ‘correct’. I guess I just fall on the side being open minded about affirmative action being applied prudently in areas of society that could benefit.

I.e. If old mate in the article you posted said: we have discovered that for whatever reason we have STEM graduates of both sexes in equal numbers but for some reason our staff in this field is almost 100% male. Empirical evidence and peer reviewed research from Rutger (1998), Farquhar (2017), Stumps (2015), Cent (2011) state that a male/female 50/50 split of staff in this field is desirable because while men are generally good at a, b and c, women are generally good at x, y and z. Therefore, we are opening up x more positions for suitably qualified women at this time. Once this is achieved we will have a hiring process clear of intended or unintentional bias.

 

[Cannon82]

Ideally in all jobs the best qualified candidate should be selected. However, I guess I can see how things can become unbalanced and a workplace can be filled with people who are not necessarily better qualified through the ‘meritocracy’ resulting in a bit of monoculture developing. Suffice to say, the ideal scenario rather than positive discrimination would be to have a throughly professional recruitment process where everyone regardless of age, (dis)ability, sex, sexuality etc was assessed fairly.

Agreed, that should be the goal. We're not going to achieve it but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be the target.

I obviously don’t know your circumstances but if hypothetically you were more than qualified for a job and had slightly better credentials than a rival candidate but the hr person decided to go with the other candidate because they were able bodied and you were not and you would require the organisation to fork out for infrastructure to make your job easier, that would suck. The above hypothetical is the flip side to positive discrimination where individuals who are qualified get overlooked for things that have little to with their ability to do a job.

That's true, and I'd imagine that probably happens a fair bit to people in wheelchairs, but at the same time not everyone is made of money or has the time / patience to go through a grant process with the government to have the workplace renovated to provide disabled access. Probably less of an issue going forward as working remotely is a much easier option to offer these days. I wouldn't throw issues of practicality in the same bucket as discrimination, given the discussion points.

I can’t comment with great knowledge on other industries in the RSA other than to say that not all outcomes of affirmative action have been good. With the cricket team, I’m aware that it has probably cost them Kevin Pietersen and there are definitely a lot of white South Africans kicking around the county setup (although Colin Ingram/Kyle Abbott is more about money than quotas I would think). It’s possibly a Schrodinger’s Cat scenario but I don’t look at Rabada, Amla, Ngidi, Pheklawayo, Imran Tahir and Philander and think their team is missing out on white South Africans who are better. I’d hazard to guess if it weren’t for players like Herschelle Gibbs, Ashwell Price, Makhya Ntini etc that the other aforementioned players may have never picked up a bat or ball.

Might be just me, but I don't get why people need to look at someone and have to have them be the same gender or ethnicity as them to be inspired. Soccer is a fantastic example of this. There were a gazillion Arsenal koddy fans around the world who would have worn Thierry Henry's shirt, Vieira's shirt, Anelka's shirt, etc growing up. There would literally be millions of kids out there wanting to emulate Ronaldo and Messi despite the fact that a significant percentage of those kids aren't Portuguese or Argentinian. This idea that someone of your race / gender etc has to be there to show you that you can do it is a relatively new idea and something I think is just another bullshit excuse to push for diversity for diversity's sake.

Also, Imran Tahir was imported because he couldn't get a gig with Pakistan and because South Africa have mediocre at best spinners. Was Amla included in the quota system? I don't know, but he was a very, very successful schoolboy talent and was earmarked for top honours from very early on. He would have been in the side regardless of any quota system.

Yeah nepotism and networking are facts of life but the issue is if these decisions are made en masse and repeated time and time again you end up with a workforce that is chosen less on merit and more on who you know, what school you went to etc. A valid criticism of affirmative action is that you may be overlooking more qualified candidates based on factors that are not to do with job competency. Nepotism is the same in my opinion.

Reporting issues in a workplace can be tough. She doesn’t believe that these people joking around are terrible people or intending to be racist, homophobic etc. There are staff surveys where issues can be raised anonymously but nothing ever gets enacted upon.

I don't see a way around that, given managers / HR people are human (mostly... question marks over HR?) and will all have past connections that may look to get a leg up in the world. I don't really blame them, either, you just hope someone isn't literally throwing every job opportunity that comes up at a friend or family member, and if they are, that the company they work for will get jack of having substandard candidates piling up in the workforce.

Yeah, its an easy thing to say to report things like this. I probably wouldn't if it was me in my current workplace, given I know my boss' boss has a very big thing for women engineers and she can be quite unforgiving if crossed. Where I am though, they struggle to find engineers to fill roles, period, never mind female engineers.

I’m not araldited to positive discrimination apart from it being a possible solution, very carefully applied as a temporary measure in certain circumstances.

I’m strongly of the view that there should be more male teachers at an early childhood education level. Positive discrimination could be a way of achieving that, although there would need to be more science behind it than rounding up blokes from a local nightclub or off the street. The benefits would be children and young people having more male role models throughout their early development and boys could see teaching as a potential profession rather something women and girls do.

Looking at additional laws / protections that have come in (quotas for women at board level, VAWA, etc), there doesn't appear to be anything careful or temporary in the measures being applied. To go back to an earlier point, if they're going to apply quotas to certain positions, why were only female quotas applied? Surely the logical thing to do if such drastic action was needed would be to apply a similar rule for minimum male representation?

I agree with you, you'll just have to work around that relatively recent stigma regarding men in childcare / early child education being paedophiles. Wonder where that insinuation grew legs? In any case, it clearly isn't a priority for many people because that's a female dominated field.

Yeah, I definitely get the point of two wrongs don’t make a ‘correct’. I guess I just fall on the side being open minded about affirmative action being applied prudently in areas of society that could benefit.

I.e. If old mate in the article you posted said: we have discovered that for whatever reason we have STEM graduates of both sexes in equal numbers but for some reason our staff in this field is almost 100% male. Empirical evidence and peer reviewed research from Rutger (1998), Farquhar (2017), Stumps (2015), Cent (2011) state that a male/female 50/50 split of staff in this field is desirable because while men are generally good at a, b and c, women are generally good at x, y and z. Therefore, we are opening up x more positions for suitably qualified women at this time. Once this is achieved we will have a hiring process clear of intended or unintentional bias.

I don't see anyone applying rules like that prudently. Reminds me a bit of Junior cricket when they decided to make it inclusive and make it part of the rules that every kid in the team had to have a bat / bowl, etc due to only a few coaches favouring their kids. Took it from being relatively competitive level to a mickey mouse everyone-gets-a-trophy cuddle fest, and the kids coming out of the system are that much weaker and worse off when it comes to stepping up to competitive Senior cricket.

Problem with what you've written there is that men are typically good at a, b and c, and women are typically good at x, y and z... on an individual level, whose to say the men in some of those positions aren't also good at x, y and z? This is what I hate about this "diversity" crap - if you want someone who is good at "x, y and z", go advertise for skills x, y and z. Don't claim that people of a certain background are good at x, y and z so you're only offering those positions to them.

 

[HANDSOLO]

I suppose in some cases the reason that affirmative action might be used in a hiring process is that there are plenty of qualified candidates of a certain demographic who miss out time and time again.

I’m pretty sure we agree that hiring someone on the basis of their sex/ethnicity etc alone is pretty pointless.

However, I can see why the South African cricket team had ethnicity quotas in an effort to get more people rather than just the minority white population interested in playing, watching and sponsoring the game. I can also see why the ALP attempts to have equal representation of men and women in roles because they are making an effort to be representative of the wider population which is approximately 50/50 male/female.


I definitely have a problem with stereotyping. Terms such as “white male privilege” are unhelpful. I also agree that just because two individuals share the same gender and ethnicity doesn’t mean they have the same worldview, experience or skills.

I can also get behind the idea of a meritocracy but there are certain instances where meritocracy breaks down. For example, my wife works as a Client Relationship Manager for a financial planning firm. She is just as (and in some cases more) qualified academically than the advisors she works underneath. Almost all of these advisors and the hr come from a fairly narrow pool of ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. My wife and others have attempted to go for roles and lost out, generally in line ball calls but have lost out to ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men. The result is that out of 28 advisors, 25 fit the above demographic. It’s not because they are sexist pigs or blind followers of the patriarchy but inevitably they hire people like them. But who knows? Maybe ex-footballer, elite private school alumni, straight white men broadly make fantastic financial advisors? In this business they are great at drumming up new business but not at keeping it. They also have huge staff turnover because people who feel there is a glass ceiling become despondent and leave, there are also issues of low workplace morale because of the joshing around about women, homosexuals, different ethnicities that occurs because employees who may represent such groups don’t feel comfortable with it nor do they feel comfortable raising it, because the people they might complain about are either those who do or friends with those who do it. In my opinion this business would do well to at least attempt to create some further balance.

I also happen to think that affirmative action could potentially be useful in trying to get more men into early childhood education and teaching as well as nursing. Providing pathways for Aboriginal people to become police in their communities doesn’t seem an awful idea to me either.

TLDR: I give affirmative action qualified support in cases where it may be required. I also acknowledge the philosophical conundrum of curing discrimination and stereotyping with another form of discrimination and stereotyping. Ideally candidates for jobs should be solely chosen on merit and I agree that diversity for diversity’s sake isn’t justifiable.

Fantastic ******* post!

Cobra Kai!!!

 

[Johnny Karate]

SNIP

I’m happy to leave it there and agree to disagree rather than get into a semantics tennis match. I’d say there’s much we agree upon but marginally come down on different sides of the fence on this topic.

I have come to the realisation that this debate has probably been conducted incorrectly by forum rules...

You were supposed to call me a leftard, snowflake, SJW, safe space loving,beta c uck, cultural Marxist fanboi of a PC gone mad wet dream. I was supposed to reply with RWNJ, racist, sexist, homophobic, white male privilege mansplainer fascist.

 

[Cannon82]

I’m happy to leave it there and agree to disagree rather than get into a semantics tennis match. I’d say there’s much we agree upon but marginally come down on different sides of the fence on this topic.

I have come to the realisation that this debate has probably been conducted incorrectly by forum rules...

You were supposed to call me a leftard, snowflake, SJW, safe space loving,beta c uck, cultural Marxist fanboi of a PC gone mad wet dream. I was supposed to reply with RWNJ, racist, sexist, homophobic, white male privilege mansplainer fascist.

Don't worry, I think you're a massive campaigner, rest assured.