I understood gender discrimination once I added “Mr.” to my resume

[Lisa2000]

"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."

[cupcake-unicorn]

I get this so much, although I've had the opposite experience, where when people notice that I'm female, certain companies get excited for the chance to have a "token woman" on their team. Isn't necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, it made me think of all the LinkedIn spam I get addressing me as sir, Mr., "we're looking for some cool dudes like yourself", etc.

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 :)

[zanny]

Well, you might just be a male fan of MLP. It happens a lot nowadays!

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.

[nawitus]

>Isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I would personally find it offending that someone would hire me on the basis of my gender to become a "token" person.

[robot_friend]

I am female with a hybrid background in UI design and front-end dev. A while back I created a fake linkedin profile identical to mine except with a male name. Even though it has no profile picture and no contacts, the fake profile gets more recruiter messages than I do, and for more technical positions (I get ones for design, he gets ones for engineering).

[djKianoosh]

You know something.. In the past I used to do a lot tech interviews and phone screens. And I think I would actually give you bonus points if my company found you via your fake profile and we ended up chatting. After about 1.5 seconds of confusion, I'd be thinking, well, this lady has some resourcefulness...

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.

[crapshoot101]

That is incredibly depressing. Have you followed up to see if they reacted differently when they found out you were not a man?

[wf]

You should write about this somewhere.

[pbhjpbhj]

Perhaps the recruiters have some negative real-life information that discounts your actual profile but no such negative information against your fake one. Your evidence doesn't show sex discrimination.

[crazygringo]

That's really, really sad.

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.

[pessimizer]

It's conscious on a lot of people's parts. I've also heard "no women, no sexual harassment suits" enough from people in tech to assume that there are a lot of bigots not dumb enough to admit it out loud.

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.

[nostrademons]

The way to fix it is to start a software company and then hire all the overlooked overqualified women on the job market. When people are being stupid like this, it's a market inefficiency; it means that the market price for a woman will be lower than for an equivalently-qualified man. As an entrepreneur, your job is to exploit that market inefficiency and in the process drive wages up to parity.

[bitops]

> What's even sadder is that there's no obvious or easy way to fix it.

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.

[ajdecon]

> And the worst part is, it's surely conscious on nobody's part. There have even been studies showing this effect.

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?"

:-(

[cliveowen]

There is a simple way to fix it. Namely providing a means to submit your resume that anonymizes name, gender, age and anything that could bias the reviewer's assessment. The best HR departments already do that, at least that's the hope.

[pseut]

There could be conscious discrimination against the resume once the "married with kids" line is added; I wouldn't be so quick to assume that surely nobody is doing it. Honestly (and this is embarrassing to admit), I'd probably think much differently about a female job applicant who had that line on her resume than a male applicant.

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.

[hack_edu]

Want to see this in action? Create near-identical profiles on any job site frequented by recruiters, one profile male and another female. Your male account, fictional or not, will get a measurable amount more attention and see more outreach.

[roguecoder]

Easy fix: have one person remove names from resumes, and a second person evaluate them.

Or, if that's too much work, just use affirmative action.

[acjohnson55]

There are some pretty obvious ways to fix it. A basic step would be people actually owning up to their own biases. At the very least, then people could better detect their unconscious biases and override them with objectivity.

I don't think that would be enough, but we'd be far better off if we could get to that point.

[jrarredondo]

I don't know if this is obvious, or if it applies to all kinds of jobs. Something I do is give all candidates an assignment: here is a problem, solve it, and let's discuss it over Skype/Webex/etc.

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.

[DominikR]

One thing that can be done to improve the situation is to require candidates to NOT include gender, age, family status etc. in their resume.

Some companies like Google do this (link: http://www.google.com/jobs/students/joining/)

[pjmlp]

Fully agree.

Some of the best developers and managers I had the luck to work with were women.

[JulianMorrison]

There absolutely is an easy, obvious way to fix it. It's just something that gives men the screaming meemies.

Quotas.

Don't give me guff about "the best person for the job". You've been picking the best man for the job.

[loginalready]

It's really really sad that once again denial is the top comment on HN with the truth starting us in the face.

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?

[Peroni]

The fact that this post is getting so much attention is baffling me. There is literally nothing in this story to indicate that the name made any difference.

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.

[lotyrin]

He didn't provide empirical evidence because there are already resources for that. This is a personal anecdote and is being shared because personal anecdotes are effective in making people think in ways that many won't be moved to by statistics.

It's not news and it's not providing any objective data, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value.

[zorbo]

When it comes to sexual bias, hacker news readers/commenters generally discard the "evidence" bit. And of course, nobody mentions the author's obvious anti-male and age bias ("but when I viewed it through the skewed view of middle-aged men who thought I was a woman").

[_bfhp]

I'm a male and I'm tired of hearing "there is absolutely no denying that sexism exists" because it's not "sexism", it's normalization of gendered oppression on a cultural level. Girls and young women are taught to be domestic, to not aspire to men's work, and they are taught half-consciously, culturally, through the media and activities they are made to take part in. Boys are taught that their competence is natural and are segregated socially and often physically from living, playing, and interacting with girls, and the culture of "girl-things"[1]. "The Gender Trap" by NYU sociologist Emily Kane documents this, and contains an excellent bibilography for more research on this. It is established academically, but people don't want to hear it -- it's radical feminist nonsense, man-hating (or "self-hating" if you're a male), so we don't have to look at the research.

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?

[johnvschmitt]

As a father, when I had my first kid, & read a few "Parents" magazines, I was so disheartened to see 99% of the references in articles referring to the parent as the "mom" or "She/her". I said, "WTF! Are fathers not parents!?"

Then, it hit me. As a male engineer, manager, etc... I just got a very small taste of the less than subtle gender biases that exist all around us. That made me appreciate my wife more (who is also an engineer), and all the others who put up with that crap even in this modern day.

This is the only forum I've complained about "Parent's Magazine"'s female gender bias. And, I only do so within a context that shows it's just a lesson in empathy for a much more severe bias in the other direction.

[throwaway420]

Interesting, enlightening, and thought-provoking article.

To 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.

[dominotw]

True. I would assume women would have a better chance since most men are tired of being surrounded by other men all the time at work, like you said.

What is the motivation for someone to be biased against women, seems counterintuitive.

[ds9]

I was very surprised to see the admission of his giving family information. Employers are prohibited from asking such questions here in the US, and I've always thought it improper to put it on a resume. It either invites unfavorable discrimination or comes across as a ploy for sympathy or favoritism.

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.

[JimmaDaRustla]

Not to negate the point, but I witnessed some MALE gender discrimination when applying to a local IBM office for a college co-op.

Ratio of females to males is low in computer programming courses, but 100% of females were interviewed for an IBM position, and 0% of males were interviewed (approx. 6 females and 16 males). This happened twice in back-to-back years.

It seems the whole gender discrimination has taken a swing in the opposite direction for this small office - work hard to find female workers over male workers. But I haven't figured if they are doing this because they care about female workers, or they want to boost their public image? Are they giving females a chance to prove themselves to work for IBM, or are they just filling the most menial jobs with females to balance out their gender ratio?

This doesn't seem like the "give the job to the person best fit for it" mentality, but maybe to them the "first glance" isn't enough to make that decision. Plus, this was just a co-op, almost anyone in the class could perform the position. I decided to view IBM's actions as a form of tactic to develop female presence in IT industry rather than gender discrimination.

[king_jester]

Interesting article. I wouldn't necessarily say you can understand gender discrimination just because you were affected by it as a side affect. It is true the author became aware or more aware of gender discrimination because of his name, but he still doesn't have the experience of living in a society where gender discrimination is a daily occurrence.

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)

[lsiebert]

If your company is discriminating, it's not getting the best applicant for the job, it's getting the best young male for the job. That is missing out on at least 60% of applicants. That should be all the reason any intelligent person needs to be concerned about these factors. It is hard to hire good people. Also the pool of individuals discriminated against by other employers is perhaps more likely to contain qualified people who have not been hired.

[nashequilibrium]

Okay HN, I knew this sounded familiar and then i remembered a similar story which was flagged and kicked off the front page. http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woma...

Could someone explain why one was flagged and the other not? I am honestly just curious.

[crazysaem]

I am graduating in a few month and also applied for some jobs in the USA (I'm from germany). I found it somewhat intresting that every employer I sent my resume to was asking what gender and race(!) I was before I could submit. You could also choose the option not to give an answer, but I have never seen that in germany.

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.

[mynewwork]

They don't use that information for interviewing/hiring decisions. If they have any contracts with the federal government, they are legally required to collect that information about applicants specifically for compliance with equal opportunity employment.

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.

[ahoy]

Every american employer asks for that, it's a legal thing I believe, and (supposedly) not related to hiring.

[simonbarker87]

We've been interviewing for our first 2 roles recently and I have to say that male or female doesn't bother me either way - we've interviewed in equal quantities and, while we're yet to fill the positions, I genuinely am not bothered if the successful person is male or female.

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.

[untog]

You might be surprised. Many times biases like these are subconscious.

[petitbeurre]

> My fiancé is an excellent engineer so I might have had the male dominated field bias squashed by that.

I don't understand. Are you a gay male? How does that change your perception of the male dominated field bias?

[streptomycin]

Other possible reasons:

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

[redwood]

Interestingly, it's not just a case of gender: Rather the uncertainty and its associated cognitive dissonance, leaves a negative feeling in the mind of a reader.

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.

[jessriedel]

There is much better data out there concerning the effect of gender (and race) on CVs. That would be much more useful than this guy's anecdotal experience.

[sp332]

It's not supposed to be data. It's supposed to change your perspective on the data you have.

[eikenberry]

Not to argue that gender bias doesn't exist. But this is not a good study case as he tainted his resume pretty badly from the start. Not being currently employed is a red flag to a lot of employers and gets you immediately discarded. And putting personal information, even if seemingly innocent, triggers the lawsuit avoidance mechanism at a lot of places and immediately gets you discarded.

[vertis]

Original blog post: http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/h...

[rachelbythebay]

I really want to read this, but the site goes completely bonkers on iOS. I can see some content but it's wedged behind this top banner. They don't really expect people to read through a tiny gap in their images, do they?

[betterunix]

Maybe it had to do with the resume appearing more formal. Try another version with "Ms." and another with "Mrs." to really make this something we can draw conclusions from.

[thehme]

This is so sad...wow! I cannot imagine what goes through people's heads when they see a very qualifies individual and then they decide it's a woman and skip even considering her.