When your startup holds meetups at bars, you're not being nice to marginalized groups that don't do well in these settings. When you haven't examined your hiring practices you're not being nice to the people you've "culture-fitted" out of your organization.
Freedom of association covers this case. If Company A irrationally discriminates systematically against any competent group, Company B can hire members of that group at a discount and beat Company A on labor costs. As companies C, D, E, etc., figure this out, their demand bids up wages, and everyone wins except Company A.
But no. Freedom of association is biased against "marginalized" groups—an ever-expanding set that seems to be converging on "anyone who isn't a normal white (or maybe Asian) male". In the land of the free, "freedom" means "your company can hire whom it pleases, as long as the demographic pattern of those hires pleases me."
It's not the job of companies to make "marginalized" groups feel welcome, or to be a good "culture fit" for anyone in particular, unless you (and the US Federal Government) make it their job. Which it seems you're only too happy to do. Destroying freedom of association? Apparently a small price to pay.
You seem to have a particular political axe to grind. Fair enough.
> It's not the job of companies to make "marginalized" groups feel welcome, or to be a good "culture fit" for anyone in particular, unless you (and the US Federal Government) make it their job.
That would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Yes, it is your company's job to ensure that you are hiring fairly across all marginalized groups.
You are free to "associate" with whomever you wish, at all times. But when through seeming coincidence some 96% of tech jobs are held by men I'd say there's something larger afoot.
My theory is sexism. It provides a testable hypothesis that has been proven multiple times. It makes predictions on other effects we'd see. Those have also been proven.
That would be the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
That's the one. It seems like an obviously good idea. Are all seemingly good ideas actually good ideas?
But when through seeming coincidence some 96% of tech jobs are held by men I'd say there's something larger afoot.
Through what seeming coincidence are 100% of NFL player jobs held by men? Or 80% of health-care jobs held by women?
My theory is sexism. It provides a testable hypothesis that has been proven multiple times. It makes predictions on other effects we'd see. Those have also been proven.
Sexism is (a) not mutually exclusive with group differences and (b) is, in many of its claimed forms, wildly inconsistent with many observable facts. As an exercise, I suggest you try making a list of such facts. You might start by listing job categories dominated by women. (I'll get you going: health care, day care, education, publishing.) As a follow-up, try listing areas where men are objectively worse-off than women. (Maybe start with: homelessness, intellectual disability, autism, workplace fatalities, imprisonment, lifespan.)
If you scratch most supposedly definitive examples of unfairness caused by sexism, you'll find some variant of the Blank Slate hypothesis underneath. Once you admit the possibility that men and women might not be blank slates, many of the patterns that appear to be "sexist" suddenly make sense. For example, many people assume that women and men have the same innate aptitude and inclination for "tech" (broadly defined). From this point of view, any deviations from "equality" (i.e., proportional representation) must derive either from overt sexism or from an endemic sexist culture. But when you accept the possibility that men and women may differ in more than stature and genitalia, suddenly it's not so clear.
What's yours?
Due to a combination of genetic and non-genetic differences, different groups are systematically different, and have different aptitudes and inclinations. Group differences lead to a first-order effect: all NFL players are male because all qualified players are male; some majority of those inclined to health care are female. The preponderance of a particular group also leads to a group culture reinforcing group identity. This leads to a second-order effect: female health-care workers create a feminine culture, attracting further female workers (while repelling male workers). This latter effect is sometimes called "sexism", but it's an inevitable consequence of human nature. Efforts to fight it will (a) cause massive collateral damage while (b) not working. (Has the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought racial and gender harmony? It seems to me that in many ways things are worse than ever.)
I'd guess we actually agree on many things, and in particular we want many of the same outcomes—or, at least, I want a subset of the outcomes you want. Let's say I want O and you want O + O'. Included in O is people of all races, colors, religions, genders, and national origins living prosperous, fulfilled lives free (as much as possible) of conflict and strife. Included in O' is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Often (as with the Civil Rights Act) the intent of policies in O' is to achieve outcomes in O, but I believe that not only does O' not achieve O, it frequently achieves not-O. Believers in O' would rather wreck college athletics with Title IX, or wreck the black community with welfare, than admit that O' doesn't achieve its stated goals. That would lead to their being accused of "sexism" or "racism", and O'-believers are as eager to avoid such accusations as they are quick to deploy them against their enemies. (Whereas I don't care, because I see them for the Orwellian terms of abuse they are. Just call me a "crimethinker" and be done with it.)
>Once you admit the possibility that men and women might not be blank slates, many of the patterns that appear to be "sexist" suddenly make sense.
I don't know of many people who assert that people are blank slates, they just take equality as the null-hypothesis until they see evidence to the contrary.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "suddenly make sense". Differences caused by discrimination also "make sense", the question is which is the better assumption. I think it's unhelpful to assume innate differences, because that assumption encourages discriminatory differences, and so confounds observation.
>Let's say I want O and you want O + O'.
People don't necessarily want the Civil Rights Act, they just think it's necessary to kick us out of the local maxima of self-reinforcing bias. Ideally, all the protected classes get their chance, and over time people come to realise they're actually equally good at most things, and then the act is no longer necessary.
>Has the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought racial and gender harmony? It seems to me that in many ways things are worse than ever.
Cultural change is a slow process, but everything I've seen suggests that things are definitely far better now than they were in 1964. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
>Believers in O' would rather wreck college athletics with Title IX,
Personally I don't think women's leagues are an ideal solution, and I'd prefer a tiered unisex system that encourages competition at every skill level.
>or wreck the black community with welfare, than admit that O' doesn't achieve its stated goals.
Poverty traps are caused by economic policy, not anti-discrimination policy.
>Efforts to fight it will (a) cause massive collateral damage while (b) not working.
Do you have any other examples of this "massive collateral damage", because I'm not finding your examples particularly compelling.
> I don't know of many people who assert that people are blank slates, they just take equality as the null-hypothesis until they see evidence to the contrary.
You've not been paying attention to the media then. But even a "null hypothesis" of equality is indefensible given the facts. Everything heritable is correlated to a lesser or greater extent, that's just how genetics works. Pretty much anything you can think of a measure for - height, weight, IQ, myers-briggs personality traits, religiosity... - will have different averages for different sexes. It would take an extraordinary coincidence for job performance at some particular job to be uncorrelated with sex.
> And I'm not sure what you mean by "suddenly make sense". Differences caused by discrimination also "make sense", the question is which is the better assumption.
> I think it's unhelpful to assume innate differences, because that assumption encourages discriminatory differences, and so confounds observation.
Assuming that any difference is evidence of discrimination is equally unhelpful. If you want the truth you can't assume one way or the other; you need to consider all the possibilities.
> Poverty traps are caused by economic policy, not anti-discrimination policy.
It can be both. Some anti-discrimination policies (e.g. having black students taught by black teachers) have made things worse for those they were trying to help. And I think those mistakes largely happened because the people involved were unwilling to even consider the possibility of innate differences.
> Do you have any other examples of this "massive collateral damage", because I'm not finding your examples particularly compelling.
Compelling (at least to me), relevant-to-here example: it's illegal in the US, and possibly elsewhere, to use an IQ or similar test in hiring (without doing an expensive study that large organizations may be able to afford but startups generally aren't). This is foolish; it damages the ability of companies to hire the best person for the job, dragging down the whole economy.
Freedom of association covers this case. If Company A irrationally discriminates systematically against any competent group, Company B can hire members of that group at a discount and beat Company A on labor costs. As companies C, D, E, etc., figure this out, their demand bids up wages, and everyone wins except Company A.
But no. Freedom of association is biased against "marginalized" groups—an ever-expanding set that seems to be converging on "anyone who isn't a normal white (or maybe Asian) male". In the land of the free, "freedom" means "your company can hire whom it pleases, as long as the demographic pattern of those hires pleases me."
It's not the job of companies to make "marginalized" groups feel welcome, or to be a good "culture fit" for anyone in particular, unless you (and the US Federal Government) make it their job. Which it seems you're only too happy to do. Destroying freedom of association? Apparently a small price to pay.