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Ask HN: Are forced gender distributions for hiring interns legal?

15 points by throwaway429310 ↗ HN
A hypothetical company offers an engineering internship program. This company's applicant pool has a ~80%/20% gender distribution (which is consistent with engineering student enrollment). However, this company's hired intern class consistently has a ~50%/50% gender distribution. Such a distribution cannot be achieved via random selection from the applicant pool, unless either the minority gender was much stronger than the majority gender, or the distribution was somehow "forced" during the hiring process. Is this legal?

11 comments

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torstenvl
Besides the fact that legal advice over public Internet forums can't possibly work, laws are specific to the jurisdictions they're in. What might be legal in one country/state may be illegal in another country/state.

To get better results from questions like these, I encourage you to (a) specify what state/country you're talking about; and (b) clarify that you're only looking for a general direction for your own further research, not seeking legal advice.

altairprime
Basically, it’s legal in the United States if the practice reduces overall inequity. If the company were 100/0 split and at least two times larger in total workers than the 80/20 applicant pool, then they could hire exclusively from the 20% until they’ve reduced their split to 50/50.

(I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice, I will not be providing citations.)

floor2
Note- this is not providing citations because this is not true.

The law is clear that discrimination based on gender or sex is illegal. Enforcement of this law is rare if the victims are male.

altairprime
Discriminatory actions that redress a preexisting bias aren’t legally discrimination.

Setting a “no hiring men” policy is not allowed. Setting a “no hiring more than 50% men until women are 50% of total workers in the area being hired into” is approximately allowed, though there are nuances in how that can be defined that an employment lawyer would care to advise you on.

There are one or two relevant Supreme Court cases confirming the specific details and caveats around this, but

(I’m not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

bleah1000
What references do you have for this? As I understand it, any quotas are also illegal, and this would be a quota.

I think you might be confusing affirmative action programs with whatever might be happening at this hypothetical corporation.

Adn AA programs are going up before the Supreme Court, so could be ruled illegal within the next year.

altairprime
Reference an employment lawyer’s statements to you, their client, with regard to your specific situation in particular. My opinions are irrelevant, whether or not I work otherwise-billable hours compiling a set of citations for you to judge, because

(I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

thejteam
Completely hypothetical... two ways this could happen and not be "forced". One, as you said the minority gender could be stronger "on average". Which could happen if the reason why the applicant pool is skewed is historic discrimination. This could discourage all but the stronger applicants from the minority gender. The top X% of the applicant pool would then be evenly distributed, while the bottom portion of the applicant pool is weighted towards the majority.

Or...

Applicants are not applying to only 1 location. If other companies have discriminatory hiring practices (whether intentional or not) but this company doesn't, then the applicants that accept an offer could skew more towards the minority group (since the majority group was more likely to get a higher paying offer or any offer at all).

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aynyc
Legal is a stupid question. Even if it’s illegal, are you willing to bring it to court in any shape or form? The answer is no unless you want to be a martyr.

Take it to HR and you’ll be on PIP in a few months or on the layoff list.

toast0
Maybe drop a line to EEOC, if you can do it anonymously. Likely, they won't do anything, but they could.

Complaining to HR when this is an HR practice is unlikely to get results. Taking it to court ism't going to be worth it, your damages are small (a 3 month internship, or nothing if you're just an employee who doesn't like what you see), court costs are high, and you may attract a negative look in the media, if the case attracts attention and the company spends resources on PR.

MarkMc
The company might claim that the minority gender is in fact 'stronger' because a diverse workforce performs better.