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Cornell Study: For STEM Tenure Track, Women Twice As Likely To Be Hired As Men

Posted by timothy on from the whose-bias-is-called-bias dept.

_Sharp'r_ writes In the first "empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members", Cornell University researchers found that when using identical qualifications, but changing the sex of the applicant, "women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields." An anonymous reader links to the study itself.

24 of 517 comments (clear)

  1. That's great news! by dark.nebulae · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been pushing my daughter in STEM and she's about to transition from HS to college.

    If this keeps up, I can look forward to her not having to move home after college graduation!

    1. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sexism shouldn't be considered great news just because it cuts in a politically correct direction.

    2. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Two wrongs don't make a right. If it is wrong to have a workforce that is dominated by one sex, then shifting your hiring processes in such a way that it will quickly be dominated by the opposite sex is not a "fix;" it's just another way of breaking the system.

    3. Re:That's great news! by Needs2BeSaid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as they don't touch her without her permission, what is the problem? People "ogle" football players, criminal defendants, police officers, puppies.... why are females the only creatures on Earth that we must not look at for more than two seconds?

      --
      Some things need to be said...
    4. Re:That's great news! by blue9steel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is it still sexism if it's correcting an existing sexist imbalance?

      It's the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes.

    5. Re:That's great news! by EmeraldBot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure that answers the question. If two people have the exact same accomplishments, except one is from sex/race subjected to discrimination, then isn't there a good chance that the disadvantaged person would have done more if not subjected to said disadvantage? Doesn't that in fact make the disadvantaged person the "better" candidate?

      No, it wouldn't. You'd have two equal candidates. Who you pick should come down to either a fair chance of some kind (a coin flip, dice roll, whatever), or you should give them an opportunity to compete to demonstrate better real life skills. Preferably, interview both and then make your judgements after getting to know them. Maybe I'm lacking in "moral flexibility", as you'd put it, but I'm not on board with sexism or racism of any kind, and I'm not going to screw over an applicant because of their skin color or gender. And even for you, think about it: you're here to judge applicants, not fulfil some higher order. If you're letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement, than I consider that a failure no matter how justified you think your final goal is.

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    6. Re:That's great news! by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This also the reasons the "we need more women in field X because they only make up Y% of workers. As far as we've come, we still have a long way to go..." trope is misleading or dangerous. That populace of worker for which they are measuring demographics is...everybody. All the people who have entered (or not entered) that field for the past 40 years.

      Today, 90% of electrical engineers are male. If tomorrow a magic wand were waved and enrollment of electrical engineers in college switched to 50/50 male and female, you still wouldn't have parity (if that's the measuring stick) for 40+ years, until last year's 90% male graduates retire.

      You could bar men from entering the profession. Make electrical engineering schools 100% female. And next year you'd still have an industry that's 89% male. So people would still be saying "we're not doing enough for gender equality in this field!"

      Clearly there's only one reasonable solution: kill all men.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    7. Re:That's great news! by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Tuskeegee Airman scenario where pilots who had been discriminated against had gone through more training before they were allowed to fly and because of this had developed better skill than the average pilot is the reverse of what we see nowadays with Politically Correct discrimination.

      Whereas once when a member of a discriminated-against group attained a position despite the discrimination they tended to stand as an example of why the discrimination was invalid, discrimination FOR groups produces examples that seem to justify negative stereotypes groups may carry.

      Using irrelevant criteria such as sex or race to decide who fills a role, fills those roles with less qualified people than would be normal for those roles, and when statistics are done to determine how those criteria are associated with performance, ironically tend to support the discriminatory views the Politically Correct interference was meant to address.

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      ...
    8. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If a woman has to be better than a man to get the equivalent qualifications (and yes, this can be contended, but I think it's likely to be true), why not view women's CVs more favouraby than men's?

      Because it means you are making a hiring decision based on criteria other than the qualifications that the applicant presents, namely their gender and your opinion about how their gender affects whether their qualifications are equivalent. Choosing to hire a person because they are a woman is just as wrong as choosing to hire a person because they are a man.

    9. Re: That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As long as it attacks us young white males, it's always *great news* (hint: sarcasm). The fact is, most equality advocates I've met don't favor equality, they want preferential treatment and don't care if it steps on others, they just board the equality bandwagon to hide their selfishness. I've seen it too many times and I'm tired of it.

      *Disclaimer* I'm all for equality and that's not preferential treatment, it's holding qualifications to the same standards regardless of race, sex, icecream flavor you like (unless the icecream flavor you like is directly a function of your job... somehow).

    10. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Two equal candidates, but one who overcame greater adversity to reach that point, suggesting they have greater inherent potential.

      I'd like to evaluate the relative adversity independently by evaluating the candidates' histories instead of blindly assuming it based on gender. But weighing things on their merits seems to be out of fashion nowadays.

    11. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You assume the other person did not face obstacles because of their sex/race. Making assumptions on someone because of their sex/race is the definition of sexism/racism.

      The neighborhood I grew up in was disadvantaged. I went to the same poor public schools, and had the same job positions to apply for. My parents had no more money then the others in the neighborhood. But someone else who is a different skin color should be hired instead of me because obviously I was not as disadvantaged? Thats a load of BS, and you know it is.

    12. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >> If I'm interviewing two candidates, one who showed up on the red carpet and one who had to crawl over broken glass to get here, I'm taking the latter every time.

      Which is fine and great. The issue is that people are assuming that because a candidate is a woman or racial minority that they had to have overcome more hurdles than the white and/or male candidate. And as a corollary, you're assuming that the white and/or male candidate didn't have an egregious past to overcome. Unless you actually know the details of a person's past, you're just continuing to propagate racism/sexism.

      You can look at statistics and say, "Well, minorities historically have had more obstacles to surmount." but that doesn't tell you shit about individuals. And individuals are what matter.

    13. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > And so long as there's systemic discrimination, there is no equality of opportunity.

      Which begs the question of why systematic discrimination is a proposed fix for systematic discrimination if we want to end systematic discrimination.

    14. Re:That's great news! by cs668 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I ran into this in college all of the time. During arguments people would assume that because I was white I couldn't understand what it meant to immigrate to the US and would say all sorts of asinine things to me. Then I would call them prejudiced for thinking that a white person couldn't have those experiences, since I immigrated and had to adapt to a new culture and learn a new language. People seemed totally dumbfounded that white people could be immigrants too!

  2. Well guys if you were passed over for a position by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You now have a basis to sue. Have at it.

  3. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So we'll see the opposite in nursing schools?

    No? You must be full of shit.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  4. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How is excluding someone from a job based solely on gender not sexism?

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  5. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Affirmative action in the United States counteracts institutional and systemic discrimination against specific groups (often visible) minorities.

    Affirmative action for women is not the same as sexism; it is a corrective for sexism.

    You'll need to define those terms carefully before you have any hope of persuading us.

  6. Re:Well guys if you were passed over for a positio by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nope.. because penis. Welcome to affirmative action, the newspeak term for discrimination against those who are not in a protected caste.

  7. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sex based discrimination is sex based discrimination, whatever the motives behind it are. yes, affirmative action is a corrective for sexism, but it isn't a counter for it, and isn't that what we really want? If one institution discriminates against women, and another applies affirmative action as a corrective measure, we may end up with cosily balanced statistics (men & women being equally likely to be hired), but we actually end up with 2 institutions who discriminate based on sex, and where actual ability plays second fiddle.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  8. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have not.

    I HAVE heard of men being run out of the nursing profession by women who don't want them there.

    There's also education, where men elementary school teachers are frequently forced out by institutional sexism, but again, no one particularly cares about the lack of men teaching first grade.

    I'm going to find it really hard to take any of this sexism bullshit seriously until I see a strong push to get half of all garbage collectors be women. Right now from my point of view it's all bullshit done by people who see nerds as a "soft target."

  9. Fighting sexism with sexism by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it still sexism if it's correcting an existing sexist imbalance?

    Yes. If gender is a consideration that influences the decision then it is by definition sexism. We can argue about whether it is justified or not (I think not) but it unquestionably IS sexism.

    until then the choices are (A) preferentially hire women, or (B) hire an equal mix and wait until all the existing faculty retires (probably at least a generation or two) for the gender mix to equalize.

    Incomplete set of choices. There are other options. The best option is to hire the most qualified individuals without regard to gender. Generally speaking unless there is a supply imbalance (which does happen sometimes) hiring the best people tends to take care of the diversity problems. Talent in STEM generally has little to do with gender or ethnicity or country of origin or age or even sexual orientation. Hire the best people and you'll get a diverse workforce in most cases rather naturally.

    The problem is that people tend to hire who they are comfortable with rather than hire the best available candidates. This is how you end up with executive teams with nothing but old white men. Look at how much of a monoculture an organization is if you want to know whether they truly value identifying and promoting the best available people.

    I should say that I'd be more strongly opposed to the practice if it were occurring in industry, but we're talking about a college

    Makes no difference. College is just another type of industry. Hire the best people. Period.

  10. Re:Affirmative Action is not the same as sexism by gregOfTheWeb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ^^^^ THIS ++

    There are dozens and dozens of programs for my daughter to participate in STEM. ZERO for my son. There are programs sponsored by local colleges, and high schools and software companies. Robotics competitions focused on girls.

    ZERO for boys.

    It is ridiculous at the opportunities cascading down upon my daughter (I am taking full advantage of it). Free, Awesome, comprehensive, ubiquitous.

    ZERO for my son.

    So anyone saying that girls are being discouraged from doing STEM is ignorant of the current situation in the world

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    blah