Unconscious Bias In Hiring Practices

Ask any Gender-Socialist about unconscious bias in hiring practices and they will undoubtedly mention the glass ceiling, making the bold claim that when gender is considered, women fare worse. This is an effect of the Patriarchy and is supposedly evidence of female subjugation.

By Jordan Holbrook: However, as with all other claims made by the Gender-Socialists, this one does not stand to even a modicum of scrutiny. They, without evidence of this practice in effect, claim that because there are fewer women at the top there must therefore be some invisible hand holding women down. The ends are evidence of the means, obviously. However, here in Britain we have a report, commissioned by none other than Harriet Harman (oh, how we love her!), which showed that 33% of directors, managers and senior officials in occupations with the highest pay are female. Despite 1 in 3 of these successful positions going to women, we are still told that women have it tough.

They also fail to acknowledge evidence from Ceci and Williams who found “that, with some notable exceptions, the playing field is now level for women and men in terms of hiring into tenure-track appointments, tenure, impact, promotion, job satisfaction and remuneration

… [They] conclude by suggesting that although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields”. Arguing that women are held back because of gender discrimination is garbage and does not reflect reality.

In fact, Ceci and Williams went one step further. They decided to investigate STEM, the feminist hot-pot of career oppression, where women are held back by patriarchal men who make sexist jokes or something or something else. Ceci and Williams found “in experiments with professors from 371 colleges and universities across the United States that science and engineering faculty preferred women two-to-one over identically qualified male candidates for assistant professor positions”. Well I’ll be. It appears the patriarchy has failed! That’s it boys, time to pack up and go home!

This is old news, for sure, so why do I bring it up? Well, just as we have the above data from the other side of The Pond, now we have some data from the other side of The World. A new study from the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA – yes, they really went with that acronym) wanted to assess whether women and minorities are discriminated against in the early stages of recruitment and to test the impact of a ‘blind’ or de-identified approach of reviewing candidates.

They found, and I quote directly now, “the results indicate the need for caution when moving towards ’blind’ recruitment processes in the APS [Australian Public Service], as de-identification may frustrate efforts aimed at promoting diversity”. In other words, working towards blind meritocracy is hampers diversity. This is seen as a problem because it would appear they want to hire a person based on what they are rather than what they bring to the table.

Almost without any self-awareness, the BETA Director mentions in the foreword that “in the trial we found that overall, APS officers generally discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates”. This does not surprise me. He continues by saying “This suggests that the APS has been successful to some degree in efforts to promote awareness and support for diversity among senior staff”. They create this study to find ways of boosting “diversity” yet find that women and minorities are shown positive discrimination anyway. I doubt they were expecting to find that result.

They continue, without irony, by stating “introducing de-identification of applications in such a context may have the unintended consequence of decreasing the number of female and minority candidates shortlisted for senior APS positions, setting back efforts to promote more diversity at the senior management levels in the public service”. So their plan to lower discrimination works but not in their favour. Okay, thanks for clarifying.

Overall, their results show:

• Participants were 2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable, compared with when they were de-identified.
• Minority males were 5.8% more likely to be shortlisted and minority females were 8.6% more likely to be shortlisted when identifiable compared to when applications were de-identified.
• The positive discrimination was strongest for Indigenous female candidates who were 22.2% more likely to be shortlisted when identifiable compared to when the applications were de-identified.

Now, do correct me if I am misinterpreting the data but, it would appear that women enjoy greater preference than men when identified and minorities (especially Indigenous) also enjoy great preference than Anglo-Celtics when identified (I assume they mean “white” when they say “Anglo-Celtic” or, are all White people “Anglo-Celtic”?). In fact, Anglo-Celtic (White) Men suffer due to their biological traits. And yet, somehow, we are supposed to believe that Women and Minorities are the victims of bias in the workplace!?

I would now like to compare and contrast the message given at the start of the study to the message given at the end of the study, to give a taster of the change in their attitude towards ‘blind’ hiring practices.

Start:

“We are excited to share the findings from our trial testing the impact of de-identifying applications for senior positions in the Australian Public Service (APS). The trial examines one critical part of the recruitment process, the way the APS initially evaluates applications and shortlists the top candidates to build the best possible workforce. The aim was to assess whether de-identifying applications would, by eliminating the effects of explicit or implicit bias, help promote gender equality and diversity in hiring at senior (executive) levels.”

End:

“The overall implications of our study are that on average, across a broad range of APS agencies, introducing deidentification would have the unintended consequence of setting back efforts to promote more diversity at the senior management level in the public service. As things stand, senior public servants appear to be promoting diversity in the way they make decisions when selecting job candidates for shortlists during the initial stage of the recruitment process. This is not possible if applications are de-identified.”

Notice a slight change there? They went from wanting deidentification because they were worried women and minorities were being discriminated against, so did their study, only to find Anglo-Celtic men were being discriminated against and  deidentification would limit this misandrist and anti-Anglo-Celtic (White) bias and are now suddenly against deidentification. I see absolutely no agenda here whatsoever.

They reiterate their agenda further:

“Our results help to demonstrate the importance of testing interventions to address diversity before introducing them at full scale. An intervention that was thought to enhance the chances of traditionally disadvantaged groups being shortlisted for a senior role in the APS by removing bias, would have, in all likelihood, lessened their chances. The findings provide impetus for conducting more rigorous evaluations of new (and existing) initiatives aimed at countering explicit and implicit forms of discrimination and increasing gender, racial and ethnic diversity at all levels.”

This is Cultural-Socialism in action, well done Australia. Goodbye blind meritocracy, it was nice knowing you.

In fact, they are so determined to find bias where it does not exist that they are willing to ignore their original statistics that show that bias most likely does not exist. “Women are almost 50% of the Australian workforce, but are under-represented in management and executive level positions. This is evident not just in the private sector but also in many areas of the APS. In 2016, women comprised 59.0% of the APS as a whole, but accounted for 48.9% of its executive level officers and only 42.9% of its Senior Executive Service (SES) officers”. Women are half of population, over half of their workforce, nearly half of all executive officers and just under half of Senior Executives. But still they scream bias.

This report is a joke and betrays their own inherent bias. What a sham.

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