Study: gender quotas displace mediocre men

[Underseer]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

 

[Peez]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

This is an interesting concept, but it might more accurately (though perhaps less attractively) have been headlined 'Gender quotas and the crisis of the middle-income man: Quotas aren't anathema to earnings: they increase earning levels by displacing middle-income men, write Tim Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickne' I would be more comfortable with the conclusions if they were not using "private income" as an indicator of competence.

Peez

 

[barbos]

What a load of BS. You failed to mention that this "conclusion" is based only on the one field only - politics.
Fact is, you can randomly replace politicians with random people from the street and it will increase competence on average. Because average politician is worse than average man.
I would like them to conduct this "study" in some more meaningful fields, but of course they already know that conclusion would be different.

 

[Bronzeage]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

It's no great surprise. Anytime a cultural bias is breached, the first people through the gap will be the most qualified of their group and most likely more higher qualified than the average current employee.

Whether it's women, or people of Patagonian heritage, etc, the old expression, "...have to do twice as well, to be thought half as good," still holds.

While a boss may feel beholden to old cultural or corporate norms, they do like productivity, especially if it comes cheap. These new wonderkind who work at entry level wages and out perform experienced hands, are good to have around.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Garbage. They are taking a narrow case where there was very real discrimination and showing that removing the discrimination helps.

The problem is that they are trying to generalize this to all quotas--with no evidence that there is actual discrimination to be removed. If you force a shift away from the balance point you cause a net harm, not a net gain.

 

[Jokodo]

Garbage. They are taking a narrow case where there was very real discrimination and showing that removing the discrimination helps.

The problem is that they are trying to generalize this to all quotas--with no evidence that there is actual discrimination to be removed. If you force a shift away from the balance point you cause a net harm, not a net gain.

So we are to believe that there is (or was, until they introduced the quota) rampant sexist discrimination in the ranks of a leftist party in Sweden, while everywhere where it might matter to your life, there's obviously none because you'd know it if there were.

 

[ronburgundy]

A more accurate headline: "Pro-quota ideologues incapable of validly conducting or interpreting research."

The research has zero implications for any domain outside of the highly unusual context of holding political office (which has no similarity for competence in either educational or other workplace settings).

But even more importantly is the absurdly invalid measure of "competence" they used, which was nothing other income level in their private sector jobs. Anyone who thinks this study tells us anything about quota impacts on competence must believe that being rich inherently makes you more competent at being a good public servant. Hilariously, Underseer and most others who think affirmative action quotas are acceptable, would be the first to reject such an assumption.

 

[ronburgundy]

To expand on why the study has nothing to do with any domain outside of holding political office, the reason is that holding office has nothing to do with competence in the first place. Virtually no one involved in the selection or support of various candidates uses competence as a criteria. The primary factor people use is whether a candidate would favor that person's own political goals and agenda over others. That is not competence, but rather having a particular bias to use one's position for particular ends. In fact, as we saw with G. W. Bush and Trump, many people are selected for office precisely because their mental incompetence and moral incompetence make them ideal for serving the selfish interest of those with the power to put them in office and use them once there.

IOW, competence is not directly tied to how much various people benefit from a person holding political office. In contrast, in all private and almost all public sector positions other than elected offices, those with the power to make hiring and promotion decisions are directly harmed by selecting less competent people. Therefore, implementing rules that require consideration of non-competence factors (gender, race, etc.) would harm the resulting competence in virtually every domain, but would be expected to either have no effect or could have positive consequences in the domain of political office.

However, this study didn't show any impact on competence either way, because no remotely defensible definition of competence was measured, only wealth. The only thing the study is even consistent with (though doesn't directly show since its purely correlational) is that gender quotas may have resulted in politicians being even more skewed towards the 1% and wealth levels that make them out of touch and non-representative of the public they are supposed to serve.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Garbage. They are taking a narrow case where there was very real discrimination and showing that removing the discrimination helps.

The problem is that they are trying to generalize this to all quotas--with no evidence that there is actual discrimination to be removed. If you force a shift away from the balance point you cause a net harm, not a net gain.

So we are to believe that there is (or was, until they introduced the quota) rampant sexist discrimination in the ranks of a leftist party in Sweden, while everywhere where it might matter to your life, there's obviously none because you'd know it if there were.

Politics in general is quite sexist. It's not specifically that party. The problem is that it's very much a who you know area, there's little room for climbing the ladder.

 

[rousseau]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

It's no great surprise. Anytime a cultural bias is breached, the first people through the gap will be the most qualified of their group and most likely more higher qualified than the average current employee.

Whether it's women, or people of Patagonian heritage, etc, the old expression, "...have to do twice as well, to be thought half as good," still holds.

While a boss may feel beholden to old cultural or corporate norms, they do like productivity, especially if it comes cheap. These new wonderkind who work at entry level wages and out perform experienced hands, are good to have around.

Exactly this.

If the hiring process is inherently opposed to the hiring manager's bias, they are going to make sure they select good candidates. When the hiring process is beholden to the hiring manager's bias, they are going to more often make dumb decisions like hire for gender or people like them. The former situation forces smart process.

This doesn't just extend to gender, I've seen bias carpet entire companies to the extent that I felt like I was working with 300 clones of each other.

 

[thebeave]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

I don't know if I will ever understand the mindset of someone who advocates for the notion of gender (or race, etc) quotas. Whether as a general policy or as a recipient of a quota policy. Let's say you're a young black girl who's grown up in a rough, poor neighborhood, but decided that you want to get out and make something of yourself. You study hard all through your public schooling, get in to a well respected college, get good grades and work summers as an intern at a company in your field of study. You graduate summa cum laude. Now its time to find a job. You prepare your resume and do practice interviews and get yourself a nice business suit. You do the job interview with your possible future boss. He offers you a job. But let's say later you find out through the company grapevine that they really didn't give a shit about your life time of sacrifice, hard work and ambition. They just hired you because of your skin color and/or because you have a vajayjay. You could have been very mediocre or even below average and you still would have gotten hired, because you had the skin color and genitalia the company needed to meet their diversity quota. Wouldn't you be devastated, humiliated and outraged to discover this?

 

[rousseau]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

I don't know if I will ever understand the mindset of someone who advocates for the notion of gender (or race, etc) quotas. Whether as a general policy or as a recipient of a quota policy. Let's say you're a young black girl who's grown up in a rough, poor neighborhood, but decided that you want to get out and make something of yourself. You study hard all through your public schooling, get in to a well respected college, get good grades and work summers as an intern at a company in your field of study. You graduate summa cum laude. Now its time to find a job. You prepare your resume and do practice interviews and get yourself a nice business suit. You do the job interview with your possible future boss. He offers you a job. But let's say later you find out through the company grapevine that they really didn't give a shit about your life time of sacrifice, hard work and ambition. They just hired you because of your skin color and/or because you have a vajayjay. You could have been very mediocre or even below average and you still would have gotten hired, because you had the skin color and genitalia the company needed to meet their diversity quota. Wouldn't you be devastated, humiliated and outraged to discover this?

It's more about countering bias than hiring unqualified people. If you were hired the assumption is you're capable of doing the job.

Sans quota black people will get fucked over no matter what.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's more about countering bias than hiring unqualified people. If you were hired the assumption is you're capable of doing the job.

Sans quota black people will get fucked over no matter what.

You're assuming there is still major anti-black discrimination, controlled only via quotas.

Oops, smaller business don't hire enough to apply quotas to--got some evidence there's a lot of discrimination there? Because it's certainly not what I've seen.

 

[rousseau]

It's more about countering bias than hiring unqualified people. If you were hired the assumption is you're capable of doing the job.

Sans quota black people will get fucked over no matter what.

You're assuming there is still major anti-black discrimination, controlled only via quotas.

Oops, smaller business don't hire enough to apply quotas to--got some evidence there's a lot of discrimination there? Because it's certainly not what I've seen.

A quick search for 'evidence of discrimination against black people' on Google Scholar pulled up over a million results. Given not all of the results were racially based.

Bias is a reality of human nature, and it is usually directed at people who aren't male, white, distinguished looking, thin, straight or attractive, even sometimes from the people who experience discrimination.

At best you'll have a forward thinking, self-aware company that doesn't see color, but for the brunt of the time systemic bias against colored people and women is pretty obvious.

 

[Trausti]

In an ideal world, social science research would provide a strong basis for advocacy and social policy. However, advocates sometimes misunderstand or even ignore scientific research in pursuit of their goals, especially when research pertains to controversial questions of social inequality. To illustrate the chasm that can develop between research findings and advocates’ claims, this article addresses two areas: (a) the effects of the gender diversity of corporate boards of directors on firms’ financial performance and (b) the effects of the gender and racial diversity of workgroups on group performance. Despite advocates’ insistence that women on boards enhance corporate performance and that diversity of task groups enhances their performance, research findings are mixed, and repeated meta-analyses have yielded average correlational findings that are null or extremely small. Therefore, social scientists should (a) conduct research to identify the conditions under which the effects of diversity are positive or negative and (b) foster understanding of the social justice gains that can follow from diversity. Unfortunately, promulgation of false generalizations about empirical findings can impede progress in both of these directions. Rather than ignoring or furthering distortions of scientific knowledge to fit advocacy goals, scientists should serve as honest brokers who communicate consensus scientific findings to advocates and policy makers in an effort to encourage exploration of evidence-based policy options.

Link

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're assuming there is still major anti-black discrimination, controlled only via quotas.

Oops, smaller business don't hire enough to apply quotas to--got some evidence there's a lot of discrimination there? Because it's certainly not what I've seen.

A quick search for 'evidence of discrimination against black people' on Google Scholar pulled up over a million results. Given not all of the results were racially based.

Bias is a reality of human nature, and it is usually directed at people who aren't male, white, distinguished looking, thin, straight or attractive, even sometimes from the people who experience discrimination.

At best you'll have a forward thinking, self-aware company that doesn't see color, but for the brunt of the time systemic bias against colored people and women is pretty obvious.

Oh, there's lots of "evidence"--the vast majority of which fails to control for obvious confounding variables. If the issue is real why is almost all the evidence garbage?

 

[Speakpigeon]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

There are too many mediocre men. All the good women could not possibly displace all the mediocre men. We'll have to live with this reality.

And how could this have applied to Trump and Hillary, anyway?
EB

 

[rousseau]

A quick search for 'evidence of discrimination against black people' on Google Scholar pulled up over a million results. Given not all of the results were racially based.

Bias is a reality of human nature, and it is usually directed at people who aren't male, white, distinguished looking, thin, straight or attractive, even sometimes from the people who experience discrimination.

At best you'll have a forward thinking, self-aware company that doesn't see color, but for the brunt of the time systemic bias against colored people and women is pretty obvious.

Oh, there's lots of "evidence"--the vast majority of which fails to control for obvious confounding variables. If the issue is real why is almost all the evidence garbage?

Are you sincerely trying to argue that race is not a serious factor in hiring decisions, while living in a country run by a president who ran a campaign based on racism, and was voted in by almost 50 million people?

That is just a silly conversation to have.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh, there's lots of "evidence"--the vast majority of which fails to control for obvious confounding variables. If the issue is real why is almost all the evidence garbage?

Are you sincerely trying to argue that race is not a serious factor in hiring decisions, while living in a country run by a president who ran a campaign based on racism, and was voted in by almost 50 million people?

That is just a silly conversation to have.

You realize that most of the people who voted for him aren't in a position to hire? And even fewer are in a position to get away with racist hiring?

 

[barbos]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quotas-and-the-crisis-of-the-mediocre-man/

One common complaint from the pro-misogyny crowd is that gender quotas are bad because they violate meritocracy. According to this study, that argument lacks merit (pun intended, in fact the pun may or may not have been a motive in posting this link).

There are too many mediocre men. All the good women could not possibly displace all the mediocre men. We'll have to live with this reality.

Yeah, and authors of this "study" are among them.