Split Thread Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

The issue that is trying to be solved is the self limiting of selection pools. What DEI in the UK attempts to do is to increase the number of people a selection is made from. It acknowledges that often self limiting selection pools not based on merit exist and attempts to remove those limits. An example I have used in the past is as mundane as to where you place your adverts for a particular role, that can limit the size of the pool not based on merit or qualifications but who reads (as an example) the magazine you have "always" placed your adverts in.
 
In a perfect world DEI policies would not be necessary, but we are still a long way from that perfect world.

There are plenty of studies that have been done where copies of similar CVs, but with different names indicating different genders and/or ethnicities, are sent out to employers. As long as the chances of being invited for interview remain greater for some CVs than others (and last I heard they still are) measures which are designed to correct that unfairness will regrettably be required. We can argue about what those measures should be, how effective they are etc, but their necessity is surely a given.

And yes, the above applies whichever gender/ethnicity is being unfairly favoured. If the studies ever showed white men were the ones being excluded, that would be equally wrong. They just never seem to. These are the two most recent studies a quick search found me:

www.kcl.ac.uk

The Resume Bias: How Names and Ethnicity Influence Employment Opportunities | King's College London

Explore the largest study on resume bias, with 12,000+ applications to 4,000+ jobs. Discover insights on name and ethnic discrimination in employment.
www.kcl.ac.uk

www.forbes.com

New Research Reveals Resumes With Black Names Experience Bias In The Hiring Process

A new study revealed that job applicants with Black names receive fewer callbacks than white applicants. This article explores the research and provides guidance for employers.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
a_unique_person said:
Yes. A lot of professions are much easier to progress in of you have access to money. The 'ladder of opportunity'. It's easier if you start off higher up.
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In the UK intergenerational persistence of wealth is well established. Unless you believe that society already stratifies people and families according to ability/merit that is a strong indication that UK is not a meritocracy, DEI attempts to move the workforce towards being a meritocracy.
 
arthwollipot said:
If you're doing DEI right, you're upholding the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In fact we should be talking about DEIA - Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.

I do not object to DEIA. I wholeheartedly support DEIA. I object to slapping the label "DEI" on practices that are not DEIA. Like promoting unqualified people over more qualified people simply because of the unqualified person's skin colour, sexual orientation, or gender identity. That is not DEIA, that is Straw DEI which I will now start referring to as SDEI.

SDEI is white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, homo- and trans-phobia wearing a cheap and ill-fitting suit.
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Yeah, we all object to slapping the label "DEI" on practices that are not. That's rather the point of this discussion.
 
Aridas said:
Close enough when it comes to the main stuff, at least.
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The corollorary is:

The left's view of what the right thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want the best white man, and don't care about anyone else.
The right's view of what the left thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want blacks, gays and women to take all the jobs.
 
Trausti said:
How about we not factor in a person's race or sex? Yeah? What wrong with doing that?
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The problem is that there are ways that a person's race can be inadvertently factored in, it does not take "conscious" racism for that to happen - look at the links in Pixel42's post.

ETA: Added the "conscious" qualifier to indicate that people aren't necessarily thinking "oh that sounds like a Pakistani name so I don't want to interview them".
 
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Emily's Cat said:
If me being female led someone to have a preference for me in any of my positions, I would be incredibly offended. Feeling that I need a helping hand getting a job in my field because I'm a female is an insult to my capabilities and my character.
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Nevertheless, you may be so good that you didn’t need a helping hand, but in situations where men take all the decisions, it is quite possible that they not take you if there were men with equal qualifications. And of course they wouldn’t tell you that we’re not selected because you were a woman; they might even know that that was the reason. To them it would just be common sense.
 
Darat said:
In the UK intergenerational persistence of wealth is well established. Unless you believe that society already stratifies people and families according to ability/merit that is a strong indication that UK is not a meritocracy, DEI attempts to move the workforce towards being a meritocracy.
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As a white, British, cis-male, Christian*, able-bodied, neuro-normal, heterosexual I'm distinctly aware that I'm playing the game of life on one of its easier settings. One of the few times when I experienced any disadvantage was when I unsuccessfully applied for entry to Oxford University to study Natural Sciences.

Having cleared the initial hurdles the critical part of the application process was a two-day stay at the college of my choice where I had a series of interviews and had to answer a series of subject-related questions. Back in the mid-1980s applicants from small comprehensive schools were definitely in the minority. The vast majority were from Public (private for US readers) schools and of the minority who had come from the state sector, the vast majority were from selective grammar schools. These applicants had received individual coaching for their interviews and tutorial sessions to help them to answer the questions. I had not received either of these which put me at a disadvantage.

I failed to secure a place at Oxford. When I went through the questions with my teachers when I got back to school they did marginally worse than I did at them. Perhaps if I had been better coached then I may have been successful but it gave me a tiny, tiny insight into the kinds of barriers that those from other backgrounds may face. A "fair" test may have set the standard a little lower for me** as a DEI measure to adjust for the fact that I came from a comprehensive school.

Someone with equal intellectual horsepower to those who had been carefully prepared by their schools who didn't have those same benefits and who had come from a disadvantaged should have been given even greater leeway IMO. They would have performed just fine at university but faced near-insuperable barriers to getting there.

* - culturally, not religiously
** - given my actual performance at university, I reckon they actually got it right :shy:
 
The other big obvious one with gender discrimination is that almost every person I've talked to that's been in charge of a small business has straight up said it's perfectly reasonable buisness sense to be reluctant to hire a young woman, on the grounds that they may start a family and lose office time and focus to their pregnancy/kids or end up leaving the workforce, wasting all their training efforts etc. This still applies to women who aren't interested in family because you can't trust that they aren't mistaken or lying, because lying makes reasonable business sense. Since companies feel it's genuinely in their best interest to avoid hiring young women, the average young woman loses out on good positions early in their career, with all the knock-on effects of that.

It's easy enough to say it's not legal for hiring practices to do that, but getting from "that's not allowed" to "we can prove you are doing that and you are going to face consequences that will actually discourage you from doing that" is a long, long walk.
 
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Matthew Best said:
The corollorary is:

The left's view of what the right thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want the best white man, and don't care about anyone else.
The right's view of what the left thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want blacks, gays and women to take all the jobs.
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My take:

"You on the right just want the best white man for the job."

"No, we just want employers to be left alone to decide for themselves who they want to hire."

"Thanks to systemic racism, that means white men."

"I don't think the problem is as bad as you make out, and your solution is even worse."

"My solution? What's that?"

"You just want to give all the jobs to minorities, regardless of merit, as a moral counterbalance to generations of systemic racism favoring white men."

"Yes, that's exactly it."

"Q.E.D."

"Racist."
 
theprestige said:
"Yes, that's exactly it."
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Hmm. I think I see the part where you are somehow misreading every post disagreeing with you here. Do you have any quotes to back up this impression? Or is it just Obviously What DEI Really Means?
 
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theprestige said:
My take:

"You on the right just want the best white man for the job."

"No, we just want employers to be left alone to decide for themselves who they want to hire."

"Thanks to systemic racism, that means white men."

"I don't think the problem is as bad as you make out, and your solution is even worse."

"My solution? What's that?"

"You just want to give all the jobs to minorities, regardless of merit, as a moral counterbalance to generations of systemic racism favoring white men."

"Yes, that's exactly it."

"Q.E.D."

"Racist."
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I love that you laid out exactly why the right is full of ◊◊◊◊ and completely off base when it comes to their\your perceptions of what DEI is and it's overall goal. It's very appreciated.
 
plague311 said:
I love that you laid out exactly why the right is full of ◊◊◊◊ and completely off base when it comes to their\your perceptions of what DEI is and it's overall goal. It's very appreciated.
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It's part of a matched set with my perceptions of what the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is and it's [sic] overall goal.
 
Emily's Cat said:
You don't really give out any civility, plague.
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Depends on who I'm talking to, I don't take to liars and people who don't own up to the things they say. I don't give respect to people who don't support their statements, as you're not in this thread despite me asking several times. I don't take to people who defend terrible policies and seem to go out of their way to defend the people who are tearing our country apart.

So if that shoe fits, lace that bitch up and wear it, but no, you and your ilk will receive little to no civility from me.
 
theprestige said:
It's part of a matched set with my perceptions of what the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is and it's [sic] overall goal.
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Good catch, I used it's instead of its. Makes me wonder how you seem to utterly fail at understanding the rest of the point being made.

If we're down to correcting simple mistakes like that then I'll be sure to keep my eyes out for when you correct others, since I know it bothers you so much. I commonly only see petty corrections like that when you have nothing else. Then again, you're doing the stupid ass Democratic Republic of Korea thing again so all hope is pretty much lost for anything relevant from you anyway.
 
Matthew Best said:
The corollorary is:

The left's view of what the right thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want the best white man, and don't care about anyone else.
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That is close to what it often comes down to, unfortunately. Those like Darren Beattie are somewhat overt about it, of course. The "don't care about anyone else" is a bit off, though. It's often darker than that, as shown in the power wielded with the Great Replacement Theories and fears of demographic shifts.

Matthew Best said:
The right's view of what the left thinks: you don't want the best person for the job, you just want blacks, gays and women to take all the jobs.
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That's the pretense, at least. Some of them even fall for that, much as willful ignorance seems like a prerequisite for that.
 
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