I’m a woman in a technical field (IT) in a technical industry (high tech engineering and manufacturing). It HAS gotten better - way better than when I started 25 years ago. It is much less systematic than it used to be (but can occasionally be systematic). But it does happen. There are still “good ole boys” and there are still a few people pretty sure a screwdriver does not belong in the hands of a woman.
There are a lot of things that are illegal that I’ve seen happen. But someone has got to call them on it with evidence. Five guys interviewing me telling me “they’d never hire a woman but HR made them interview one” in a conference room is not going to be a provable situation (that was a long time ago - 12 years - but 12 years is not that long ago).
Sure. But I’m guessing that lee’s story is not going to involve something that the average listener will agree is an example of bias. And I believe the average listener would conclude that your story does, in fact, represent bias.
Well, we still don’t know lee’s specifics, but yep…basically, I’m just saying “there still is REAL bias - even if you don’t see it” - but there is a lot of just plain noise where people take offense over what reasonable people wouldn’t find offensive - or read bias where none was intended. There is, in my mind, a huge difference between a guy with a picture of a beautiful woman as his desktop background and the guy who asks you if you swallow. One I need to go a little out of my way to get worked up about - the other one is intended to make me uncomfortable.
I was asked to give my impression of someone I interviewed, and so I gave my impression. I did not recommend against hiring him, nor was the bias bit the most important of the notes I made. I wasn’t worked up about it; I was annoyed. It wasn’t the type of thing I would usually bring up to anyone else, but having been asked my impression, I gave it. I felt it relevant partly because he will be working for, with, and above women as well as men. My impression is that the note was received as I intended it to be by the hiring manager, as a data point, one of many.
I wasn’t worked up by this, but my co-worker, who initially said he did not observe such things as language use or the other bit, is worked up. Over the next few days after the interview, he changed his own report from not noticing to observing just the opposite of what I did. He has brought it up in casual conversation, as well as beginning new conversations specifically about it. In these conversations, he has repeatedly pressed me to admit that sexism is no longer a problem in the US. He has specifically asked me about sexism I have experienced, and then denies that what I experienced was due to sexism, and trivializes whatever the experience was. I mention that some of these experiences are similar to those reported by other women and so he tries to dismiss them too.
You are still talking in circles to avoid revealing what you thought was biased about the candidate. If you can’t spit it out, it makes it very hard to even consider what you’re arguing for. So until you can tell is exactly what the candidate said that made you assume he was a sexist, I’m going to side with your co-worker and tell you that you probably didn’t hear what you thought you heard.
If you said anything that indicated that you thought he was biased or sexist - I’m sorry, you recommended against him. You didn’t need to say anything other than what you said. That’s a pretty strong accusation to make against someone - it isn’t a statement that can be ignored by others as a matter of taste or a personal tic - like “well, I didn’t like her shoes, who would wear those with that skirt?” or “did you notice that weird blinking thing he did?” Saying someone comes off as biased when you are interviewing them for a job reads as “I think this guy is going to give us (me) problems that may stray into court.”
And while I don’t know the specifics, you may also have created problems for yourself. I’m not interested in having folks on my team who see bias where there is none - or where its probably innocent and not really worthy of discussion. Those folks take you to court over imagined slights. I would be hestitant at this point to ever promote you, and if I had a chance to lay someone off, you’ve tagged yourself with ‘potential problem.’
I think a point that some people are missing (and I’m not surprised, since lee keeps stating it pretty much the same way every time), is that lee is not asking “did I see bias where no bias existed?” - she’s saying “there are times when someone experiences bias (here is an example) and others not only disregard the experience but even deny the possibility of such a bias existing - why would this be?”
In other words, the very-cloudy example itself is actually irrelevant.
To the OP: I don’t know why exactly so many people have so much invested in trivializing, dismissing, ignoring, rationalizing, and denying any and all claimed accounts of bias reported by minorities or women, but good lord is it annoying. It’s like this constant stream of:
“I noticed this.” “No, you didn’t.”
“This bothered me.” “Well, he didn’t really mean it THAT way.”
“I’ve observed that …” “Stop whining.”
“One day this happened to me.” “Are you sure you’re not over-reacting?”
And on and on and on and on and on. 20 different people bring up 20 different situations in which they’ve experienced bias, and sure as sunrise, here comes the “anti-PC” brigade providing 20 different excuses to explain away every one of them as something (anything!) other than actual bias. Even if they have to twist themselves into pretzels to do it, as is sometimes the case. Can’t some of you people, for just once in your lives, get past your knee-jerk defensiveness against accusations of racism or bias aimed at someone else, and take the person you’re actually talking to at his or her word? Just once? Please?
Of course it’s relevant. Why is lee’s word taken as gospel? Why is her co-worker’s claim that he saw no bias dismissed? Without the actual situation, we can’t say why her co-worker is acting the way he is because he might be the one that’s in the right.
Sexism (and its more incendiary cousin, racism) is a serious accusation. Asking “is that really what they meant” is the only fair thing to do.
I get this. But I think that in matters of perception, there are very rarely black/white answers. There’s almost always some shades of gray. It requires case by case judgment, so without the case at hand we do not know of lee’s coworker is being an ass or of he’s being somewhat reasonable.
Why would someone deny such a bias existing? Because they don’t want to sandbag a potential employee with something they perceive as trivial.
Most pointless thread I have seen for a long, long time. If it were posted in MPSIMS a mod should find a way to downgrade it.
Someone said something and acted in a way that meant something, and grrrrrr, I didn’t like it. What they said and the way they acted can’t be mentioned but, grrrrrr, I didn’t like it.
Whenever, in future, people laud the quality of threads in Great Debates, I will link to this one to show them what crap people are willing to “debate”.
I don’t take it quite the same way, but to the extent you’re right, I would agree with lee – it seems oblivious to deny that a given bias has any possibility of existing in the world. There are sexist individuals; some of those individuals act in sexist ways. If someone at lee’s job is taking the position that there is simply no such thing as sexism, and any illustration to the contrary must therefore be wrong, that person would obviously be in error.
But I don’t think that this was lee’s major point, if for no other reason than it’s trivially obvious that lee is correct – why start a thread in Great Debates to ask, in essence, “My coworker denies that sexism exists in any way, shape, manner, or form – why does he do this?”
It seems much clearer to me that lee observed two specific points in interacting with this candidate, included them in the list of observations on that candidate, and was challenged by the coworker, who did not see the same behavior or saw it but concluded different things about it.
If this is correct, then it does become relevant what lee saw and heard, because, although we weren’t there, we are able to read a description of behavior and reach our own conclusions.
lee mentioned two things. One will be much more subjective: the candidate’s general reaction to lee, who the candidate perceived as female, was different than the candidate’s reaction to Coworker, who the candidate perceived as male. Coworker saw the same interview and did not perceive bias. It’s unclear to us if coworker saw the same behavior and interpreted it differently, or simply didn’t see it.
The second piece of evidence is the candidate’s use of a masculine pronoun to refer to a group of individuals; the group presumably contains both men and women. lee has not provided a great deal of detail here, except to say that in lee’s view, “best practice” is to use a gender-neutral descriptor.
Bingo. To say someone is biased is a HUGE accusation, particularly in a job interview. If that bias is trivial (not using gender neutral pronouns or terms would be pretty trivial), I’d wouldn’t mention it - and challenge anyone who did with “that really isn’t a big deal.” I’ll argue that those terms create bias systematically - but I’d NEVER accuse someone applying for a job of bias with so little evidence.
There have been various levels of expression of bias described in this thread, from trivial to severe. I would think that response to the bias should likewise vary. Why is it that mentioning the perception of an expression of bias should be perceived as some kind of nuclear option? A job interview is one place where one should expect to be observed and evaluated on both verbal and nonverbal aspects. Why should the evaluation include only the aspects related to bias only if that the display was so egregious that it is indisputable and inarguably warrants the highest sanction? Surely bias is relative to the workplace at levels other than its very worst.
Because it is almost guaranteed to cost she applicant the job. As noted earlier, you are essentially saying that you can notwork with the person and are likely to litigate if he *is *employed. (Sorry, if s/he is employed).
You really don’t get it do you? The problem isn’t making an observation of bias. The problem is that you observed something that might, just possibly, have been bias and declared that what you observed was definitely bias.
On a selection panel, I also evaluate applicants on their dress. If I noticed a slight stain on someone’s lapel, do you think it would be reasonable for me to tell the other panel ,members that I saw semen stains on the applicants lapel? How about if I said that I saw a stain from the semen of a 12 year old boy on their lapel?
Would that be reasonable to you? After all a job interview is one place where one should expect to be observed and evaluated on dress. Why should the evaluation include only the aspects of dress that are so egregious that it is indisputable and inarguably warrants the highest sanction? Surely dress is relative to the workplace at levels other than its very worst.
I hope you see now how odd your position is. You have no more evidence that this person was biased than I have that the stain was semen and not milk or bird droppings. To state outright that what you saw was bias is akin to me declaring outright that it was a semen stain.
In both cases we should expect anybody we tell that too to ask the obvious question: how do we *know *that it was bias/a semen stain? Nobody is disputing that we *perceived *it as such. The question is whether that perception is accurate, and what it is based on.
I have a question lee. If i posted your OP, but I said that I perceived a semen stain rather than bias, what would your reaction be? Would you ask me why I thought it was a semen stain and not a milk stain? Or would you simply agree that it was indeed semen, and that any other panel members were wrong for refusing to acknowledge it was a semen stain from a young boy?
Because you are basically asking us to do the latter. Without giving any details of *why *you think the non-gender-neutral language was bias, you just expect us to accept that it was. Note that nobody is denying that non-gender-neutral language was used. What is being questioned is whether it was the result of bias or simply an artefact of the English language.
Side note, but is the idea of kite as related to a racial slur well known? I just saw it on South Park–Kyle’s super hero was the Human Kite and Cartman mispronounces it as kike at one point.
In more than one company, I have attended classes and taken online computer training which specified that gender neutral language is to be used in all business communications. The training gave positive and negative examples and advice on what to do. The training also went into how it is a matter of respect. The companies thought it important enough to spend money and resources on. I don’t think that mentioning a failure to use it in a formal business situation as part of an evaluation is unreasonable.
I am glad I can trust the hiring manager not to do what so many of you seem to be doing: Acting as if the mention of an observation of bias is the equivalent of saying, “I won’t work with person, and if you hire him, I will sue.” Such an attitude, that mentioning any hint of bias is a de facto declaration of war, is detrimental to establishing and maintaining a positive work environment. It presumes that there is no middle ground, and that people will never change, and must not be asked to do so. Having the ability to raise a concern means that there is the chance uncomfortable or hostile work environments can be improved. It means there is another option other than just leaving.
The position that no bias can be mentioned unless it is extreme means that all those who engage in behaviors in the middle ground get a free pass forever. Those who send out memos to just the women telling them to clean up the break room and other common areas should be told to stop doing that and the reasons explained. Those who expect women on their team to fill out their paperwork and make copies instead of doing it themselves, ought to be told to stop. Those who organize a rota to relieve the receptionist at lunch and choose to ask all the women in the company instead of all the administrative staff ought to be told not to. And when they are told, it should be made clear that compliance is genuinely expected.
I’ve seen this happen. Years ago, I had the good fortune to be a fly on the wall (computer tech on the floor) while a young banker was told that he is to do all his own paperwork, not to ask the women on his team to do it. The best part was when the president of the bank offered to teach him how to use the copier and fax machine. As far as I know, that individual did learn.
I want things to get better, and that means that we have to be able to raise concerns. All this treating the mention of apparent bias as the equivalent of filing a lawsuit runs directly counter to that goal.
It’s one of the things I really notice about this board. A number of posters seem to have only two choices. Something is “OMIGOD RACIST!” or it’s completely not racist. It’s “BURQA-LEVEL SEXISM!” or it’s not sexism at all.
I don’t know why that is, but it’s very prevalent, at least here.