I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume (qz.com)
"I made one change that day. I put Mr. in front of my name [Kim] on my CV. It looked a little too formal for my liking but I got an interview for the very next job I applied for. And the one after that. It all happened in a fortnight, and the second job was a substantial increase in responsibility over anything I had done before. In the end I beat out a very competitive short-list and enjoyed that job for the next few years, further enhancing my career."
390 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 294 ms ] threadTo me, another interesting experiment would be changing the first name of the resume to something that's nearly unambiguously male, say instead of Kim O'Grady to just Robert O'Grady, and seeing if that has the same effect.
Another interesting experiment would be adding "Mrs." in front of the name Kim and seeing if that has the same effect.
Personally speaking, I believe that technical people are sick and tired of the sausage fests at most technical companies and all other things being equal would go out of their way to hire more women.
What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
I'm not making a moral judgment, just describing what I've seen over the years as to one explanation of how men can have a subconscious bias that prefers hiring men.
That's an important observation and plays a huge role in perpetuating sexism and gender discrimination. It continues to exist because guys let other guys get away with it. If you speak up and indicate that you're not okay with it, behaviors and attitudes may change.
It's not easy and it requires courage. But it's necessary to really make a dent in the historical patterns.
Remember there's a difference between bare-faced misogyny and garden variety politically incorrectness.
I do find it important that work be a place where I feel respected and safe. Eliminating sexism and gender discrimination in the workplace is part of that effort.
I guess it wise to think about what you are saying and not say stuff like 'fuck off', 'stop bitching' which may be construed as inappropriate.
Having worked with women, I'm of the opinion that it really depends on leadership and the maturity of everyone in the shop. If you have scumbags around that are allowed to act unchecked, then a woman can destroy a shop in a matter of weeks. If you have good leadership that clearly outlines proper and improper behavior, then things usually come out ok.
First, as you have said, the military has always been a male-dominated institution. The first time that we actually started putting large amounts of women into uniform was during World War 2. We took women for clerical jobs so that more men were able to fight on the front lines. The recruiting slogan was "Free an Man to Fight."
The military has always been seen as a catalyst for social change. It's arguable that the integration of black and white soldiers was the first step in the civil rights movement, and the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is probably going to be seen as the first step of the federal government ending de jure discrimination of gay people. With this in mind, a lot of feminist lobby groups are trying to do the same thing with women with the exact same goals.
The problem is that men and women are much further apart than these other integration challenges. Black men and white men are culturally different, and there were a lot of problems with integration. I'd say that there still are problems; if you look at a battalion, you'll notice that all the black guys hang out with each other, all the Hispanic guys hang out with each other, and so on. However, everyone is still able to function as a unit. The same is true for gays. I'd say that it's mostly because most gay men stay in the closet for their terms, (lesbians are almost universally accepted) but the repeal of DADT didn't really have much of an effect on anything because a gay man is still basically the same as a straight man when it comes to doing work.
This is not so with women.
Similar to firefighting work, the military is a very physical job. Everything ends up being physical in some shape or form, and it really doesn't matter which MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) you pick, you're going to end up doing something physical as a matter of your daily duty. There are particularly egregious cases where they stick women into Ordnance, but even a job like avionics technician involves doing hard labor (Ha, you thought you'd use a soldering iron all day? Guess your recruiter didn't tell you that you have to take off all the hydraulic lines before you can take the control box out. Have fun).
There's a very clear double standard that is communicated, and it's insidious for several reasons. When a man "falls out" (can't keep up with the rest of the unit) of a run, his life sucks. In my shop, falling out means you just volunteered to run with the master sergeant at 2:00 in the afternoon. It's summer in Arizona, and it's usually around 115 degrees. Not a good time. We have a guy who isn't very good at running; as a result, he gets to run every day at 2:00. He is pretty miserable. He's definitely getting better, though.
When we had a female sergeant, she also fell out every time. The response was indifference because, "well, she's a woman and it's just par for the course that women can't keep up with men." It's also implicit that said sergeant could make the case that the master sergeant is only making her run at 2:00 because she's a woman. The case would go, "Your standard is too high, and you know that I can't keep up. You're being a big meaniehead and you're only making this standard because you're sexist." The master sergeant's career would be fried before you can say "Equal Opportunity." An EO case is a career-ender.
Because this issue can't be dealt with in the open, (it's verboten to say that women are simply not as physically capable as men) you have a lot of people who pay lip service to the "We're all equal" party line but snicker at women in leadership positions. And, sadly, it's justified in many cases. This aforementioned double standard also get...
It may not be your intention, but I get the sense that you feel this is unreasonable?
As a thought experiment, consider what you'd say if we were having this discussion around racism. Do you consider it unfair for black people (or any non-white racial group) to expect society to change due the discrimination they've experienced?
Imagine we have an office staffed exclusively by white people. Then imagine a black person joins. After a while, they hear a racist comment, not overtly racist, but insensitive and potentially hurtful. If the black person complains about this comment, would we feel it okay to say "oh come on, you're just overly sensitive"?
People who are skilled in manipulating the environment use whatever tools are available to get their way. When you decide that an entire class of people, say women, are unwelcome because you're worried about dealing with chickenshit complaints, you are discriminating illegally.
Unfortunately, the economy over the last 40 years has demonstrated that that option is sub-optimal.
Or did you mean by "time under the PC microscope" and "garden variety politically incorrectness" that you are ok if other people are uncomfortable, as long as you aren't?
Huh? Explain? I don't even know what you are referencing.
"The increase in female employment has also accounted for a big chunk of global growth in recent decades. GDP growth can come from three sources: employing more people; using more capital per worker; or an increase in the productivity of labour and capital due to new technology, say. Since 1970 women have filled two new jobs for every one taken by a man. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the employment of extra women has not only added more to GDP than new jobs for men but has also chipped in more than either capital investment or increased productivity. Carve up the world's economic growth a different way and another surprising conclusion emerges: over the past decade or so, the increased employment of women in developed economies has contributed much more to global growth than China has."
[1] http://www.economist.com/node/6802551
This may sound reasonable, but this is actually the opposite of what happens. In terms of hiring, people tend to leverage existing social networks and look for people that are similar to themselves. This generally puts a bias in favor of candidates who are not women, esp. when hiring for positions that are higher up in a company or business, as men generally outnumber women in higher level positions.
> What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.
Bias against women can take many forms and it may not be overt. Attitudes and basic opinions on women often form the basis for a actions that are micro aggressions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression
To that end, some people (men or women) may see women as not fit to do a task, not fit with a particular culture or set of workers, not able to interact with other depts. or businesses as a representative of a company, etc. Of course, there may be overt sexist discrimination as well.
And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect.
What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.
Unfortunately there are many ways in which a person may be unfairly discriminated when looking for a job, than there are protected classes in the law.
The harder part is how do you turn off the bias once the interviews start?
This was an issue with many orchestras - they ultimately made the auditions physically blind. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Goldin&Rouse.pdf
The proposal went on to say that that people should apply for jobs using their National Insurance number (like a social security number, but basically just used as a UID with the tax office - I don't know what else a SSN does, but it seems to be more important than that.) This would mean that candidates selected for the first round of interviews would be chosen 'blind', even in small companies, which would limit this sort of subconscious discrimination.
I'd love to see this sort of idea resurrected; the article is an excellent advert as to why.
[1] before we got into a coalition with male Tories who think they got into oxbridge on merit...
That gets supplied when sending a resume?
It could be a hash of the persons name, too, but then the public would have to learn what a hash was...
NI number works well in the UK, because it's convenient (and the original suggestion was specifically for the UK.) A similar system could be used anywhere.
But since there probably aren't many two-year-olds applying for jobs nowadays the comment is still relevant.
Thank you for the update and chuckle!
Someone who wasn't born a US citizen would only get assigned an SSN with their green card or work visa, and I'd imagine the prefix would indicate their first place of residence in the US.
So the most you can get from a pre-2011 SSN is that someone lived in some particular state in some particular year, and that information is likely inferable from the resume anyway.
Quoting from the Social Security office: "Must my child have a Social Security number? No. Getting a Social Security number for your newborn is voluntary. But, it is a good idea to get a number when your child is born. You can apply for a Social Security number for your baby when you apply for your baby’s birth certificate."
A couple of decades back, the law was changed to require the SSN for any claimed dependents. Most people, of course, want that ~ $4,000 deduction, so hospitals often distribute the birth registration form.
For what it's worth, I was also born in the 1970s, but didn't get my SSN until jr. high, as I recall.
Considering that doing that is an invaluable tool to people lacking "real" work experience, either recently or in general, I think that could end up hurting a lot of people.
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readi...
However, in cases where the quality of in-person interaction is a major part of what you're trying to assess — like for a team programming environment — it's going to be pretty hard to do anything comparable.
Obviously some level of programming expertise is required, but once you've crossed that minimum threshold, personal communication becomes a larger and larger share of an employees value.
In fact telephone, or skype, interviews for the first round is actually becoming standard in many fields.
Well, you could argue that list of skills, education and work experience could bias the assessment as well. There's no clear-cut line here that separates relevant from irrelevant.
Sometimes even gender is relevant. For example clerks in grocery stores are mostly women and there are bunch of good business reasons for that (even if they are based on stupid social biases, those biases still are real and business value can be extracted from them).
Also, once a shop commits to a particular gender choice, it might be inclined to stick to it exclusively. For instance, I heard a first-hand story from a local grocery store about why exactly it avoids hiring men (especially attractive ones) for clerks - because it leads to relationships forming between co-workers, which usually end with people left jealous and/or angry at each other. I can't really blame that shop for this choice, it is a rational one.
I'm not responsible for hiring decisions right now, but if I were then one thing I wouldn't want to be anonymized are names. I do believe in the concept of maintaining blacklists against well known cheaters, spammers and other evil doers, and anonymizing names makes you unable to discriminate people by level-of-assholiness ;).
Allow me. It's illegal for an employer to discriminate against applicants based on gender when it doesn't serve a direct business purpose. (Actors, Models, Priests, etc.)
While I can sympathize and understand their reasons, I can not condone their solution.
You can't legislate away reality...
That is a problem. Denying said value is not necessarily the best solution, but some solution is necessary.
If there was a protocol\industry agreed standard for doing hashing of names on applications, then you could still do this.
Ironically later we made an attractiveness estimator and I suggested we use it to screen somebody applying for a secretary position (I was only joking and actually more pointing out the ridiculousness of having photos on resumes).
And sometimes, the early career applicants adds the employers of their PARENTS in their CVs !!!
Whether you like the fact that a surprisingly large number of university student has academics for parents, it is still there, and if you want an intelligent person, it might act as a decent filter to look for intelligent parents, especially is said person does not have much experience otherwise yet.
My company, Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com), is doing exactly this on a larger scale: we're a marketplace that connects people and employers, but the employers see anonymized versions of each candidate's data/career history.
They request to interview candidates on the platform based on these anonymous profiles. Should the candidate accept, we reveal contact information to both parties and help schedule the interview.
While we're still fairly early stage, we're aiming to expose bias at different points in the hiring process using this approach, and at the very least help employers understand their own biases. Acceptance is the first step to a solution, no?
There is no easy way to fix it, but there is a way to fix it. I won't go so far as to say that it's obvious to many people.
The way to do it? Work to change men's attitudes and biases towards women. It can definitely be done, but it takes hard work and cultural change.
I would recommend the book "The Macho Paradox" by Jackson Katz for anyone interested in the topic of gender discrimination. Jackson writes well, he's a man, and he brings a mans perspective to the issues. There is no demonization or undue blame assigned to men in the book. It's a powerful read.
(Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent is also excellent - one woman's experiences disguised as a man. Sounds potentially lightweight or biased, is neither.)
Most HR departments are staffed by women for example, they would be the ones that saw a "Mr." in the resume.
But you are right - it’s not an exclusively male problem, and woman are perfectly capable of discriminating against other women, and do, frequently, and often unconsciously.
In the end society as a whole needs to change how it views women, and how it acts upon those views.
A problem might exist, but targeting the wrong target won't fix it, stop blaming the "higher ups" for decisions (conscious or not) taken by the ones that took those decisions.
I very much doubt there is a company where the CEO made a explicit rule for the HR don't hire any women.
But I can see your point, let's just assume it was the HR person that threw out the resume. And since we're in assumption land, let's assume the HR person was a woman.
Because men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business, esp. in the highest levels of business/corporate hierarchy.
Of course, combating misogyny and patriarchy doesn't mean only men will have attitudes changed, but let's not pretend about the numbers of the situation.
This is the problem, not (only) men's attitudes. The most screwed up part is that this inequality often holds even in female dominated professions, like librarians and teachers. I'm into forcing companies to do things rather than waiting for the attitudes of millions to change, esp. when the effect of that attitude only increases the income and options of the people whose attitudes you are trying to change.
Institute quotas and penalize companies if they don't make them. In the beginning, companies may have to hire women that are less talented than the men that are available to them, but if the positions are there, women in general will up their games to compete with each other for them. It's basic economics.
Do you see the irony in this statement?
Human Resources Workers 71.8% women
Human Resources Assistants 82.7% women
It does not mean that the implication is true.
This was true even when I managed hiring at a company of 50 people or so. At companies smaller than that, I've usually been the one to have a first look at resumes for my team.
HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager. The majority also conduct the phone interview and occasionally the first face to face interview.
Finally, who do you think hires other HR staff? So, yes. Human resource people are hiring managers. More so than most.
We have HR. They don't screen.
I might suggest ratcheting back "incredibly uninformed".
The vast majority of established organisations with 100+ staff have a HR department and in Europe, the HR department usually screens CV's and are regularly involved in phone screening and/or first stage interviews.
HR tends to be the first line of defence between a job seeker and a hiring manager
From my experience (longer than tptacek's) there are BFE (big freaking enterprises) that use HR to screen, but in every one of those, if an external applicant could find a hiring manager, HR reduced to a pro-forma deal.
Even at the executive hiring level, if HR is meaningfully involved, it is with a specialist hired to do nothing but that.
As a "first line of defence" they are the opposite of qualified. External candidates and internal hiring managers find ways around them if they are at all involved. Otherwise, the result is not filled with qualified folks.
[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21551535
Either way, HR didn't hate him because he was beautiful, and there are conceivable reasons why even a gender balanced HR department might screen out candidates posting their "beautiful" photos along with an applicatiom that don't involve petty jealously.
If photos are relatively rare in a culture receiving applications or the photos used are glamorous model applications, one could even argue that it's a reasonable alarm about a person's willingness to nakedly milk their looks. Even if that isn't the case, a non-partisan observer might [over]correct a perceived (and often real) tendency for beautiful people to receive more favourable treatment in some environments. Maybe they could apply the same criteria to tall men too...
But while looking, I instead found research that slightly contradicted my current understanding of the subject. They[1,2] claimed that there is no difference between female and male management in how they discriminate. They say that both genders are equally bad in creating equality in the work space (deciding hiring or pay rate).
So I still stand by that we need to change people rather than men, but thanks for pushing me to look for sources.
[1]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...
[2]: http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2011/r-11-26-Paverkar-chefe... (Swedish)
Are you suggesting that as a hobby, a career, or?
Who has the time or inclination to do that?
"It can definitely be done"
As a practical matter I would personally worry more about other things than spending time reversing established thought process and bias.
Now of course if someone wants to start a movement or a non-profit toward this cause (and somehow be able to earn a living from that) that's fine. Or if they decide this is a cause they believe in and instead of spending leisure time on something else that's fine as well.
For example, many people on HN care about privacy and government intrusion. They don't need to be convinced as to why it's important to speak up about the NSA and the US treatment of Edward Snowden. People who care feel it's a personal imperative, so they do something about it.
I personally have the time and the inclination. Because it's something I care about. Maybe you don't care about it, that's your personal feeling, so you won't take the time. But I'm sure that there are other things in your life that you care about, and you do invest time in those things.
It's absolutely fine not to care about every social cause out there. I don't think we can expect everyone to care about everything. Just pick those things which matter most to you and work to do something about them.
As for a movement, there are a few out there that I'm aware of - in particular I am a big fan of the work of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP).
I'm impressed with your reply and the way it is phrased. Not typical for HN (and other places) where you can and do get jumped on because people feel differently or feel you have to care about what they care about or what a crowd thinks is important. Very well put.
"But I'm sure that there are other things in your life"
This really is one of my core problems with people judging. They don't know the complete picture and focus on one vary small thing and make their judgement from that.
For example maybe someone doesn't like recyling (and never recycles) but is free with their time and help in another area that has much greater personal and societal benefits.
People spend a lot of time communicating. Mutual teaching (gossip, storytelling, etc) is the core of human society.
I will try to find the citation.
my anegdotal evidence is most women I knew found female peers a pain in the ass and explicitely admitted they in general prefer to work with men.
The first step is to get the candidates CV and work history, and then re-enter that information into a generic form. Only crucial information should be entered in this step, leave out the candidates gender, marital status, age, the name of their school(s), the names of previous employers, etc. The second step is to pass this "sanitized" information on to someone else to make the actual decision as to whether or not the candidate should be interviewed.
The two step process is repeated in the interview process. Only objective information is taken down by the interviewer, and again this is passed on to someone else, who can make a value judgement about the candidate without their judgement being colored by the candidates gender, race, looks, height, perfume or whatever else is considered to be extraneous information.
Worthless comment then, carry on.
We were specifically looking at hiring-related gender bias among different education levels. Our study showed non-statistically significant bias among those without a bachelor's degree, and statistically significant at a moderate correlation level among bachelor's degree holders. The worst were the subjects with graduate degrees; not only was it a strong relationship at a statistically significant level, it was as extreme as our methodology could detect. And it went both ways (e.g., a female identified applicant wouldn't be considered for a mechanic position, but a male identified applicant wouldn't be considered for a nursing position either).
Respondents weren't supposed to put specific information on their responses, but one prominent individual did. Our curiosity got the best of us, so after we input and calculated our metrics, we looked at the identifiable subject's responses. This individual was in charge of EEO and non-discrimination policies at a research 1 institution, and she was the most gender discriminatory individual in the study!!!
In particular, I wouldn't necessarily expect that line to imply anything about a male candidate's commitment to the work/job, but just write it off as a misguided attempt to look "well rounded." So, shit, I'm worse than I thought.
If a man is married with kids - then he's got more commitment to work because he's got the responsibility of a family depending on his income.
If a woman is married with kids - the she's got less commitment to work because she's got the responsibility for the well-being of a family depending on her attention.
But, of course, if the applicant is qualified I should try to figure out why in the job interview, not by projecting some made up story on the resume.
If you're going to be giving me dirty looks for working less than 50 hours, have an unspoken mandatory happy hour attendance policy, 24x7 oncall, etc, I don't want to waste the time of both parties by interviewing with you.
I could be going too far, though. Maybe the kind of dumb lockerroom overshare bluster amongst the employees and managers of sexually harassing companies and departments lends itself to admitting incriminating things like that to other men with a wink wink nudge nudge.
What we have here is hypocrisy. Society tells women that they're equals, but then tells them that they're cows to be extended special dispensation to churn out offspring. We have plenty of people on the planet, and we don't need more. Having children is a choice, and we shouldn't all be expected to pander to those who make it.
What's the solution here?
Schools like to separate girls from boys, and points towards improved and safer environment. Conferences like to create women only sections, in the idea (with some irony) that it would improve gender equality, and like schools, make a better environment for teaching out technology.
I call it stupid because it fail some basic common sense. A mixed classroom, work space, or conference room is better because it increase cooperation, make society better, and switch the focus on the individual skill level rather than their sex. Schools have almost gone through this stage and fully gone over to mixed classrooms. The work space is learning the same lesson, but slower. As to conferences, I can only assume that they are looking at the workplace and fail to connect the dots.
To their detriment. As a product of both coed and all boys private schools, there is a stark difference in teaching and disceplin in single sex schools that research shows improves outcomes. Hit http://scholar.google.com/ with "single sex education." There is a huge discrepancy in male performance especially that most teachers admit a preference to teaching girls as they "behave" better.
Bigotry and sexism exists, but the "problem" is an effect of the US obsession with political correctness and an overly sensitive and litigious society. There are cases of systematic discrimination in organizations, but they are not as pervasive as a few decades ago, so there has been progress, especially in corporate environments. An example is a female cousin with a law degree. Being a women of breading age, she was specifically asked if she intended to have children in the next 5 years which was a non-starter. These were small firms that couldn't afford to have a junior partner off for maternity leave. She had no problem with that at a large corporation.
On equality, if you start giving men maternity leave in the same way as women, and effectively change societies views on gender roles in the home, you might start seeing that form of discrimination disappear as in the scandinavian countries.
There is much to be said about differences in men and women's personalities. Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that. So as long as the kid gloves are on...
I agree.
>Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that.
I definitely disagree with that at work. If you want to discuss your sexuality, comment on people's body parts, or articulate your unified theory on the differences in the natures of men and women, get some friends. People have to work in order to eat - allow women (and men) to get through it without having to constantly bite their tongues or else be seen as the problem. We've made a decision as a society that racial, sexual and religious discrimination are problems at work. Find another subject.
Right. Bite my tongue and put on the kid gloves. Wouldn't want to discuss last nights episode of Game of Thrones in the break room, less be seen as a sexist jerk. People do have friends at work, and normal human interactions do take place there.
If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too. If your self-righteousness is because you feel put upon by not being able to say what you want when you want, I entirely lack sympathy.
If someone is uncomfortable with something they should speak up. If someone says they are uncomfortable with something that should be respected (within reason).
Its not that hard when everyone just behaves as adults instead of spoiled sheltered children who cannot communicate with each other
And even so they should still speak up. Even if someone has some unreasonable discomfort (ie it makes me uncomfortable when you wear red) it may be so minor that it can easily be avoided. You couldn't expect people to not wear red, but if a co-worker said that to me i'd probably just try to not wear red.
Without communicating/talking about it, reasonable or not, there is absolutely no chance of the situation getting better.
I agree there is a place and time for everything. However, true friends are rarely made in polite company. I prefer to work with friends.
It's a subtle thing, really. One person can make remarks about women and shoes and it's funny because we know that's not his real opinion, another does it and it's offensive because he thinks it's true. It really is about what your real opinions and intentions are.
Perhaps step one should be "find out their real opinion and intention". But too often people just go straight to "thermo-nuclear melt down".
In a world where sexism is still a huge problem, it seems that forcing students into a monosexual environment would only contribute to stunting their social development even more. Compare, for example, the relative incidence of sexism in a heavily male field like programming or philosophy with the amount of sexism in a gender-integrated field like biology.
This idea of separating students by gender to increase performance is really treating them like little test-taking machines: students, by and large, do not choose to take gender-segregated courses unless their parents require it of them. They're human beings. They have a fundamental right to develop in a natural social environment. And, like it or not, schools provide a large proportion of a child's social interaction, which isn't going to change anytime soon.
But most importantly, any improvements are highly controversial and tend to disappear once researchers attempt to correct for confounding.
"The Pseudoscience of Single-sex Schooling", Halpern et al, Science 2011: http://womenstudies.wisc.edu/documents/ScienceSingle-sex09-2...
The most successful school systems in the world, in Northern Europe and East Asia, are all coeducational. There are also a whole lot of interventions that don't require such drastic measures. Cracked of all publications wrote a surprisingly well-researched article on the subject:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-way...
Using a microphone and turning on the lights is a far less severe encroachment on students' freedom than, well, segregation. Seriously.
That's sexism, plain and simple. Who are they to assume she's going to take extended maternity leave and be the primary care giver? They would never ask that of a man (most male law partners are married and have kids), because they would as assume that his wife would take care of the kids. That's sexism.
Why is it legal to discriminate based on data in some situations but not others? I think the only solution is to remove the logical justification for discrimination: force men and women to take equal parental leave.
as a result car insurance prices for women increased significantly, while mens remained the same.
additionally annuity rates for men dropped, while those for women remained the same (the provider is no longer allowed to factor in that men on average die several years earlier).
I'm all for fairness. Equal is not fair in all cases, nor is fair equal in all cases...
No reason it can't be both. It is stupid, but it's also the dictionary definition of sexism.
Some set of hiring managers assumed a mother with kids would likely focus more on family then career. That assumption may or may not be dumb. It's certainly correctable if there is serious statistical evidence it is wrong (unlike someone just being a bigot).
That wouldn't help this case though, because the inclusion of kids in the resume was an intentional signal that mangers were meant to interpret as such. Since the applicants gender was misread, the signal was read as they wanted flexible hours, not that they were stable. Sure, dad's could ask for flexible hours, but that is on the whole a less frequent occurrence.
This is an even stronger single because asking if I have kids in an interview is in fact not legal in most places in the US, so including it your self is making a huge point.
Oh, there's also the fact that if you did interview them and not hire, the fact that it was in their resume might give the grounds for sueing you for gender discrimination.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find such a law. What you will more likely find that it is illegal for an employer to discriminate in hiring based on that information, and an employer asking the question in an interview is quite likely to be used in any lawsuit over alleged discrimination as evidence that they were, in fact, discriminating in hiring based on the information, since asking a question in an hiring interview is pretty compelling evidence of an intent to use the response in making hiring decisions.
A more salient question is why there is discrimination on gender in hiring. Is it outright sexism or is it discounting for the fact that a women is far more likely to exit her career to have kids or reduce her hours. The answer radically effect how you fix the problem.
The study in question: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf
It's not such a huge point if you read the bio at the top of the article and noticed that the author lives in Australia and not just assume he lives in the US.
Mind you, Australia does have similar anti-discrimination laws.
In the present times, some set of managers would assume it for ANY woman of childbearing age. And if a woman doesn't have kids, she's assumed to get pregnant and go on maternity leave.
The point is that not hiring women because they have kids, is stupid, as the same can happen to men as well. Except for the pregnancy time, of course.
Many European countries, have shared leaves between parents.
Would you say that assumptions is completely unfounded? What percentage of women don't have kids?
Imagine what would happen if a guy came in and said "I like this job, but my real passion may be art. There is a %50 chance in the next 5 years I am going to leave my job to peruse that." You'd try to avoid hiring them.
Of course, this has terrible consequences in that it effectively discriminates against women in hiring, but simply trying to get hiring managers "not to be sexist' isn't going to fix the problem. You are asking employers (men and women) to weigh their personal ideals ( gender equality) against financial incentives(retaining employees, not paying to).
Sweden does it :)
It saddens me to know there are people who think the presence of women infringes on their right to make sexist remarks. And that making sexist remarks is such a vital part of their everyday life that hiring women is the unacceptable route.
I'm sad that you were forced to make that choice, I'm proud of the choice that you made.
It is a problem when "sexist remark" has a much more vague definition in court than in everyday life.
In his position if I wanted to make a more general point about the court system I would have burned a few more sentences clarifying my point.
Also, badclient wrote exactly one sentence: It is a problem when "sexist remark" has a much more vague definition in court than in everyday life. This is a true concern that does not infer anything about which sex did which sexist thing... only that the definition of "sexist" is dangerously vague. If you think that translates to a "hate of all women", you have projected that upon badclient.
EDIT: "both ways" should probably be "all ways" since all parties involved could be the same gender.
Americans seem to like having things escalate. Going to court is the first reaction to everything in stead of asking someone to apologize or talking things out. The incentive for going to court also seems to be very high, you can get large sums of money for small things. Money is the biggest reason people work in the first place.
I don't know why hiring decisions would be based on gender at all, though, so I don't know why badclient seems to argue for it here. Both men and women can be frivolously litigative.
If you find yourself so embattled with the courts, perhaps you should try and understand the behavior of reasonable people. I have to agree with rayiner -- this sounds like typical male-tech resentment for being called creepy one too many times.
"No, he's not sexist, he just doesn't like women... for good reason!" "No, he's not sexist, he just can't talk to women... for good reason!" "No, he's not sexist, he just has seizures when he sees the color pink, and women are more likely to wear pink."
Who cares? The woman still doesn't get the job.
The excuses are equivalent to a student saying they deserve an A for trying hard and having extenuating circumstances though they can't actually do what they're graded on.
People take "sexist" and "racist" to describe intent. I don't give a s(*& about your intent. It's the effect that's relevant.
And I'm not trying to be a PC zealot here. I've told and laughed at many an inappropriate joke. But I also have a lot of respect for the idea that you should not make people feel uncomfortable at work and you shouldn't go out of your way to dismiss candidates of a particular gender (or race or class) because you think you would offend that person and you are incapable of not offending them.
Another notable thing about feeling like you can't hire certain people because they will be offended by things you say in the office is that you are making it clear that you have a narrow range of means to express yourself.
You can have a lot of respect for something and still have a hard time achieving it. You're suggesting that people that make crude jokes around a sex about that sex don't respect that sex. I find that assumption to be unfair and false.
Why is it bigot to think that? Seems like a valid concern, can't really blame companies for worrying about that?
It's of course a problem, but what is the proper solution?
There are studies showing that the unconscious effect exists. But it's definitely conscious at times.
I know a few people in HR in Silicon Valley, and here are a few things they've heard from actual hiring managers:
"You don't have any kids? Great, we can work you harder!"
"If he had to reschedule the phone interview because his kid is sick, I don't want to move forward hiring him. He obviously has his priorities wrong."
"I don't know, she's at just about the age most women get pregnant. Don't we have a guy we could interview?"
:-(
I work at a company notorious for poor work\life balance, and nobody has ever said to me 'we can work <person> harder' in any context.
They say things like 'We value people who are commited to growing the company. If a candidate shows us he's willing to go the extra mile to finish the project he's working on, that's a definite positive indicator."
How on earth is this kind of discrimination not conscious, when the only difference in a written resume is the assumption that the person is female?
Quotas.
Don't give me guff about "the best person for the job". You've been picking the best man for the job.
Demand will drive supply, if needs be. Lack of demand has certainly driven it down.
Assuming that currently 20% of programmers are women, would 60% of the current programmer population (or 75% of current male programmers) have to go unemployed until more women had entered the workforce? Following from my first question: if we think paying men and women differently is a-okay, what would this 25/75 split do to the salary of male programmers? How would this affect gender relations in the workplace?
Would these same quotas apply to universities as well? How would the market react to universities making cuts in graduation rates to accommodate occasional fluctuations in the woman student population?
What kind of grace periods and permitted lag would be allowed? If I fired a woman, would I have to fire a man to make up for it that same day? That same week? That same month? Would I just have to refill that position with another woman? What if I decided to eliminate that role entirely?
I am not convinced that you have put thought into your proposal. It makes for a good sound bite and I don't doubt that your intentions are noble, but it is not a good idea.
Most universities actually have more women students overall. So applying quotas to all fields would reduce female enrollment in many of them.
"The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...
Quotas really are quite a multifaceted fix.
- Directly and immediately drive up numbers.
- Create a demand for women that pulls the supply.
- Create a supply of women leaders with experience and skills.
- And create somewhere for them to go, so they don't get discouraged and quit.
- Change people's mental image of working with/for women from abstract and theoretical to specific and personal. Overwrite their stereotypes with actual experience. This goes for both men and women.
- Cause some coworkers to resent a person for being hired just to fill a quota rather than on merit.
If you want 50% of qualified candidates to be women, you have to find the nerdy girls in middle school with the aptitude and give them the latitude to develop the obsession the way boys can. Nobody who starts in college because they're chasing dollar signs is going to be very good.
The solution to discrimination is not more/different discrimination.
Discrimination is prejudice plus power. Men are the ones with the power right now and "sexism against men" can not exist. Not in this society.
Come up with a list of MRA talking points and I'll laugh at you.
Noun:
1) The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
2) Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.
Hmmmm.... nothing in there about power.
sex·ism /ˈsekˌsizəm/
Noun:
1) Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
Sure... it says typically against women. But if sexism against men can not exist then that definition would have to say always... not typically. So you might not want to accept it... but your statements are wrong... plain and simple... wrong. You can't just make your own definitions for words and then project them onto everyone.
Quotas discriminate. Period. If the rule says you must have 50% women and 50% men, when it comes time to hire a new person, you absolutely will have to take the gender of that person into account in order to make sure you stay within the quota. I have absolutely no idea how reasonable people can think quotas are anything but discrimination.
I'm not part of the MRA. But go ahead and lump me into the MRA group if that is what you need to do so you can laugh at me. I really don't care. Because that would just be one more thing you are doing to water down the real issues. You do your cause no good to be like that. Overuse of words that used to mean something is becoming the butt of jokes! You are making them a joke. Go laugh at that. Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! Eventually no one will listen anymore.
- reinforces prejudice at an everyday level as the group whoa re being quota-ed down resent losing their jobs to people who can't do them.
- sends a signal that excellence doesn't matter and that what you are is more important than who you are.
In a list of really silly suggestions to reduce prejudice, quotas are the stand-out silliest. We surely want to increase the number of any discriminated-against group because there is a level of untapped excellence in that group; if we get rid of prejudice then we can access that excellence. Quotas go against that idea; you reduce the level of excellence in the field overall, retard development and competitiveness and reinforce the prejudice that you're trying to combat!
The best solution typically wins. There is no way to fake talent when an actual job-related problem needs to be solved and then a solution sold to a team of folks.
There are issues with this approach too: somebody else could help the candidate, the presentation style, etc. Picking the right problem to solve is important, as is deciding ahead of time what is the criteria for selection.
Note that "women aren't represented in the executive levels" isn't a significant issue, not for the vast majority of women or men. Very few people are executives, and it's not important to 95% of the population what the gender of the executives is. The majority of women have more in common with the majority of men that are non-executives, than they do with the few women that are executives.
Or, if that's too much work, just use affirmative action.
I don't think that would be enough, but we'd be far better off if we could get to that point.
Some of the best developers and managers I had the luck to work with were women.
Some companies like Google do this (link: http://www.google.com/jobs/students/joining/)
and then there are languages, like Nordics and Slavic, where the last name reveals your gender - Sigmundsdottir (daughter of Sigmund), Politkowskaja (f) vs. Politkowski (m), etc.
I wouldn't know that Sigmundsdottir would be revealing the gender, and many other wouldn't either. (I'm not saying that it can't be improved even further)
Edit: I have a slavic last name that doesn't reveal my gender (on the balkans, last names are the same for both male/female)
This was supposed to be data, in the sense that it was supposed to provide you with the sense that, empirically, gender has a huge effect.
If you subtract this from the story, what do you have left? A personal account of how having difficulty finding a job shakes your confidence, forming maybe 3 or 4 sentences? Were you unaware that getting rejections is hard?
Second, my complaint wasn't that it had no data, my complaint was that it was essentially just data, and that this data was much noisier than some good, widely available data. Wrapping crappy data in an engaging story that stick in the mind of the reader, when better data exists, is doing the reader a disservice.
The male profile always gets far more views and recruiter messages.
The finance industry has a terrible reputation for blatant sexism for example however it's been proven categorically by the world largest finance recruitment firm that over the last 70 years the number of females in executive positions in finance is steadily and blatantly improving.
Their studies also prove that there is still a gender issue in finance but claiming that not much has changed is categorically wrong.
Did you ever follow up on any of those offers via the fake profile? I'm curious to know the reaction. I know I'd look at it favorably. But I might be in the minority. Don't know.
But that does bring up an interesting point - it could be they find me unattractive and thus having a photo is the negative factor (which is still gendered, but in a different way). If this were a true psych study and not one person's curiosity the fake profile should have a photo of a man of a similar age and attractiveness (as judged by a previous study)
I don't understand how the recruiter potentially finding you unattractive makes it "gendered".
Perhaps it's because you're too attractive and so you're threatening to them.
Sadly it's not just the gender thing that's going on here as well, I'm thinking of some study they did where they attached photos with the resumes - the "attractive" people (both men and women) were rated as better skilled than the "normal" and "ugly" people that had the same resume. Although, I think that if I took some fancy photos of myself and primped myself up, I don't think it would do me any favors and I'd get some unwanted attention!
My name isn't even gender neutral, very feminine...I think I once was on some board online using my real name and people were still assuming I was a guy. When I asked how they could possibly think it was a male name, they replied, "I dunno, I was thinking it was like one of those fancy Italian names, like Fabio or whatever..Fabia..yeah, same thing...they always sound like girls names."
I've now started picking the most ridiculously cutsie usernames possible, like this one, to keep people guessing. Sometimes it backfires still and people just get homophobic, but I generally stick with it anyway for fun :)
I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.
In my experience it hasn't really been 100% about "just being the token woman" but I feel like I have gotten interviews and jobs that I wouldn't have otherwise.
My brain lit up on that sentence and I clicked on your profile to see what you looked like. (Happily married and all of that but men are visual)
The second, parenthetical statement is what tips it way over the edge. It's like making a comment about 'culturalism' and then adding a footnote saying 'BTW, I'm totally not racist'. He obviously realizes that absent any context, saying "I spent at least 30 seconds hunting for a picture of you on the internet, person I've never met" is not socially appropriate. So he tries to shore it up with the fact that he's married, so obviously he has no interest in any other women outside of clinically judging their suitability for objectification.
This is further supported by the incredible, scientific claim that men's ability to process someone's comments on a message board is directly impacted by their ability to first judge that person's attractiveness - in a purely objective way, remember, he's married. No doubt this gentleman has a Firefox extension dedicated to finding all HN commenter's faces so he can better understand the cryptic squiggles they produce on his screen.
What does that even mean?
Seriously; unsolicited negative comments on pretty much any aspect are not ok. Sexually charged comments are not ok in most environments. But I don't want to live in a world where complimenting someone on their appearance is a bad thing.
Add: Agree. I'm truly baffled by the parent comment.
People say things about appearance all the time. And I can't think of many cases where a comment (positive) about how someone appears (if said in the proper tone of voice [1]) is not appropriate. And even in the case of a negative comment you'd have to take the relationship of the parties into account (agreeing that that's a much broader situation and safer to not say anything).
[1] Of course I can think of many other exceptions (person dying in the hospital and you say "you look great") but the parent comment doesn't appear to be suggesting fringe cases.
What are they? I'm curious about what is prompting downvotes other than the obvious sorta somewhat non-pc patina.
I think it is a good thing it is harder to discriminate people on names, colors, etc. They are all superficial and have nothing to do with sexuality anyway. I think in the end just too many people care what chemical is more prominent in your body between testosterone and estrogen.
I feel a little sick.
My wife noticed that too. She has basically the exact opposite experience as the author. Her name is also gender neutral, but more commonly male. As soon as she added "Ms." she started getting interviews. Comments like "it will be so nice having another woman around here", and "we have too many men in the IT department and 99% of the applicants are just more men" are apparently normal, even from men.
I do know I have felt somewhat embarrassed when I had to reply an email to people with a gender-neutral name. Although maybe that's because there are no such names in my country, so I find the situation odder than most people. But I can picture a HR person wondering about the gender of the applicant and just skipping to the next CV to avoid the uncomfortable moment, especially if there are many similar CVs to choose from.
I've certainly been someone who has looked to hire more women in my engineering departments over the years, but I can't imagine why someone would do it for token reasons. For me it was about increasing diversity of opinion and balancing out the culture so we didn't hire misogynist assholes in the future.
That said, gender bias a real thing in hiring and faculty practices in the US.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201...
http://www.upenn.edu/provost/images/uploads/Gender.Racial_.B... (pdf warning)
I suffered more age discrimination after a certain point in my career than gender discrimination.
And he does mention he went over the top crafting his resume...
All genders face gender discrimination. For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government. Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations. Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on. Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.[1]
1. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/men-outnumber-women-among-a...
This has been addressed a couple of times. Note that 1) the 216,000 number is for victims of "sexual abuse" which doesn't necessarily mean "rape" and 2) not all inmates of penitentiaries are male.
This is true, but it should be noted that gender discrimination is fundamentally related to patriarchy and misogyny.
> For example, the country I live in is a Nordic country often hailed for equality, but the state forces all men to do slave-labour for the government.
I don't know anything about this so I can't really comment.
> Men and women face about the same amount of gender discrimination in Western nations.
I'm from the US, so I can't speak for every place, but that is most certainly not true here. Women and trans* folks are far more likely to experience sexual assault and violence compared to men and generally women face systemic issues revolving around family and work that men do not.
> Men's problems include more severe jail sentences, forced labour, lack of father's rights and so on.
In the US, its not just men that are more likely to receive jail time, but esp. black and hispanic men. There are systemic issues with racism that perpetuate this problem and this is intersectional with systemic issues with gender. All prisoners suffer from work programs that are essentially indentured servitude and forced work (not sure if that is what you were getting at).
In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring. Men have a high success rate in getting custody in family court when they pursue custody, however men do not pursue custody nearly as often. Also, any kind of bias or discrimination in favor of women in family court is rooted in misogyny in the first place.
> Interesting fact: majority of rape victims in USA are male.
This because the rates of rape for men overwhelmingly come from prisons and being incarcerated. Further more, this isn't really that useful of a thing to say anyway outside of the context of prisoners rights and prison abolition, as women do face high rates of sexual assault and rape and most perpetrators of rape are never convicted.
Making faith based statements like that and acting as though they are evidence based is not productive. There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their redefinition of patriarchy.
>In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring.
No it is not. A system that was equal would begin with shared custody as the default, and a case would need to be made to remove either parent's custody based on their being unfit. A system where men are required to spend considerable time and money fighting to get less custody than women get by default is not equal. The reason men have high success in getting custody when they pursue it is because they almost exclusively pursue it in cases where there is substantial evidence that the mother is grossly unfit. Have a man talk to a custody lawyer while you listen in. They will universally tell you not to bother pursuing custody unless you have proof the mother is an addict or has allowed another man to assault the children frequently. Using selection bias to dismiss valid concerns makes it appear as though you have a vested interest in maintaining inequality.
>This because the rates of rape for men overwhelmingly come from prisons and being incarcerated.
And those don't count because of what?
Cool; how about some evidence for your custody assertions?
> There is no evidence to support feminist mythology surrounding their redefinition of patriarchy.
Systemic sexism is widely documented. This ranges from pay gaps [1] to harsher views on overweight women vs men [2] to sexual assault [3]. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Are you objecting to appropriation of the word 'patriarchy'?
[1] http://www.oecd.org/social/family/LMF1.5%20Gender%20pay%20ga...
[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.1108%2F02610150910937916
[3] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
> And those don't count because of what?
Read the next sentence. Male rape is predominantly a the parent isn't saying that male rape victims "don't count".
Oh?
>This ranges from pay gaps
Which are a deliberately misleading "problem" feminists like to complain about, but which don't actually exist.
>harsher views on overweight women vs men
Where? You mean personal preferences? Like how short men are viewed harsher than short women? That is not systemic.
>to sexual assault
Where the actual systemic problem is that the government deliberately misrepresents male rape victims by not counting "forced envelopment" as rape?
>Read the next sentence. Male rape is predominantly a the parent isn't saying that male rape victims "don't count".
You didn't make their point any clearer.
Also, you clearly didn't bother to glance over any of the data I provided. You probably should, especially about the extremely well documented gendered pay gap. Denying that such a gap exists when there are mountains of evidence to the contrary only makes you sound ignorant and chauvinistic.
I'd still like citations on the male custody and on this 'forced envelopment' business.
I have no idea why you have such a hard time with the FBI rape stats, googling "forced envolpment" would get you what you want: http://www.good.is/posts/the-fbi-expands-its-definition-of-r...
Although Norway's government decided this year to make military service mandatory for both genders. So I'm assuming that parent is from Finland, Sweden or Denmark.
I don't agree with your definition.
>I'm from the US, so I can't speak for every place, but that is most certainly not true here. Women and trans* folks are far more likely to experience sexual assault and violence compared to men and generally women face systemic issues revolving around family and work that men do not.
I disagree, even with US. Men face more violence than women, for example.
>In the US lack of "father's rights" is a red herring. Men have a high success rate in getting custody in family court when they pursue custody, however men do not pursue custody nearly as often. Also, any kind of bias or discrimination in favor of women in family court is rooted in misogyny in the first place.
Ah, so discrimination against men is actually discrimination against women? I disagree with your invented definition.
It may have been a lesser factor in this case, but I would guess hardly anyone does this today, and I had thought it was no longer considered OK even before the 90s.
Regardless of what you can ask you can always ping people and find out answers.
You can discuss your own situation and see a reaction on the part of the person you are speaking with. Takes a bit of creativity.
I know of someone who wanted to hire only puerto ricans for his bricks and mortar store (forgetting the reason). So you can't advertise for "puerto ricans" but you can say "knowledge of spanish a plus".
Reasons for this could be: 1. I'm 25 so I wonder if I haven't experienced enough to bias me one way or another (what that experience would be I've no idea)? (don't claim I'm being ageist, I'm not it's just one possibility) 2. My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.
Maybe the solution to this problem is to have recruiters and HR departments redact the name of someone and replace with a number.
In the UK it's not a requirement to ask for someones age on their CV so maybe internal processes could be implemented to further reduce the likelihood of subconscious, or conscious, bias.
Anybody claiming to be unbiased (color, race, sexuality, etc.) should take several Implicit Association Tests - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
3. You didn't factor in an increased risk of sexual harassment problems
4. You didn't factor in an increased risk of getting pregnant
I don't understand. Are you a gay male? How does that change your perception of the male dominated field bias?
Similarly with né and née, for people who have changed their names.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fianc%C3%A9
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fianc%C3%A9e
It's blatant confirmation bias. Nothing more.
Allow me to state, once again, there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists and that it's an issue that needs to (and eventually will) change however this article adds absolutely nothing new to the debate.
It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.
But men are affected as well. Older men take longer to report symptoms of serious disease to doctors because they are taught that they should be able to handle it. Men are deprived of emotional outlet and expected to live up to impossible standards, foregoing friendships with women in the process. You see all these young men with unrequited love ("friend-zoned") who can't accept friendship with female people and thus must invent strategy to solve the woman-puzzle-box or justification for harassment.
Questioning gender itself is the best solution, logically.
[1] Rough examples for "girl-things" as a phenomenon: A girl can wear blue or pink, but a boy wearing pink is doing a "girl-thing" (I've read that the color scheme was reversed a under a century ago). A young woman can watch an action movie or a romantic comedy, but when a young man watches a chick-flick what is he, gay?
On the other hand some people on HN find it odd to have a picture of you on your CV - which is the norm here.
In other words, no one was looking at that information when looking at your resume. Someone in HR was looking at aggregate data at the end of the year to say "Hey, we're hiring group X at above/below average" or in the event of a lawsuit to prove they don't discriminate.
So no, that's not "all the reason any intelligent person needs", you have to give an actual reason.
Since there are very, very few subjects attended equally by both genders, employing equally will get you worse people.
Note that the above actually assumes that people from both genders are in general equally capable/intelligent. If you add, for example, a higher standard deviation of the IQ for gender C, you will get even more skewed results.
Could someone explain why one was flagged and the other not? I am honestly just curious.
Another addition for my "don't waste my time" domain block list.
The whole content of the post is "I got rejected many times. I added a Mr. before my name. I got accepted many times."
There are many other kinds of uncertainty present in a resume; and its always a risky factor because folks like to understand context.
Have an ethnic name? Assume people might think you're an immigrant. If you don't want them to assume that: emphasize where you're from, etc. This is good personal branding. Is it unfortunate that you might feel a liability here? yes
For example, in my office when someone doesn't show their picture in our email system: I feel negative about them. When they don't show a picture and have a name that makes it difficult to know how to refer to them, I'm doubly-frustrated.
Much of this frustration is subconscious but people need to be congnicent of how they come across to others in many contexts.
here I choose to be 100% identity neutral, because I can be. But in work this is a big mistake, because formal expectations are applied in correspondence and you need to feel you're meeting those expectations with a job applicant.
If you're in this position, you've done yourself a disservice: "Dear Sir or Madam, We are sorry to inform you that we cannot offer you a position"
Is this a problem with our society? yes.