Curious to see what r/MR thinks about this study - Female applicants rated significantly lower than identical Male applicants for lab manager position in double-blind study.

irishsnowday · 2012-10-14T17:22:13+00:00

Do you have a link to the study? Before I can agree or disagree I'd like to see what this study found, and determine for myself whether it is linked to sexism or not.

TracyMorganFreeman · 2012-10-14T17:43:21+00:00

Don't trust gender research that looks for sexism.

Its not science.

Column: When 'science' looks for sexism, it finds it

When is a science paper not really a science paper? It's when the scientific method has been hijacked to promote a clearly stated ideological agenda.

Rest here

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-07-26-men-women-feminism-sexism_n.htm

EpicJ · 2012-10-14T17:54:46+00:00

I don't deny that happens but it happens to both men and women depending on the job

also an interesting study I just found

Previous research has shown that people react differently to employment equity directives for underrepresented men versus underrepresented women. For example, Oppenheimer and Wiesner (1990) found that, generally, respondents hired the most qualiﬁed candidates for both nursing and police jobs regardless of gender. However, when employment equity intervention was introduced, respondents favored a male candidate for the nursing job,and a female candidate for the police position. Even when there was no employment equity directive,men tended to pick a male candidate for the nursing job and a female candidate for the police position,provided they were equally qualiﬁed. However,under these circumstances, women selected a female candidate for both the nursing job and for the police position. Oppenheimer and Wiesner (1990) suggestthat these results might reﬂect greater gender-role stereotyping for traditionally ‘‘female’’ jobs like nursing than for traditionally ‘‘male’’ jobs like police ofﬁcer, particularly among women.

http://www.academia.edu/1410940/Are_men_always_picked_over_women_The_effects_of_employment_equity_directives_on_selection_decisions

Collective82 · 2012-10-15T03:15:40+00:00

I would choose not to hire females because of how they affect the workplace. There was an interesting article about the "sandbox" and how women affected it when present. This article explained to me why I didn't like working with women even though I don't think o myself a sexist and can work with women with no issues.

Tamen_ · 2012-10-14T21:00:39+00:00

You'll notice that it's not just men who exhibit gender bias, but women as well, which the researchers believe indicate that the bias was NOT intentional or malicious, but rather institutional.

Because women can never be intentionally or maliciously biased, that's a capability only men are capable of?

Oh, the irony of such a clear case of gender bias on display by the researchers/authors of a study about gender bias.

dittendatt · 2012-10-14T21:18:56+00:00

Q: If a man and a woman both have a Physics PHD from Harvard, who is more likely to have a higher IQ?

A: The man

The reason being that all major universities discriminate heavily in favor of women in admissions. So the signalling affect of where a woman went to school is tainted. A woman will always get in a school 10-20 rankings higher than where she could have gotten in as a man. Discrimination leads to discrimination.

tomek77 · 2012-10-14T17:37:20+00:00

Sample size: 127.

Lead researcher has phD in "thesis on the topic of negative reactions to women" source

Pardon me, if I am skeptical, but it's not like "women's studies researchers" never lied about the wage gap, domestic violence, rape statistics, false rape occurences, health-care spending for men etc...

DavidByron · 2012-10-14T20:19:51+00:00

I could criticise the methodology and sample size but the whole point of the scientific method is I don't have to because to be science it has to be a repeatable result. There's no need for me to say this is the result of some biased gender thinking by advocates because in science it's irrelevant until it's reproduced.

What I will say however is that results like this of tiny sized samples (127) and dubious methods get published as front page news by the feminist corporate press, whereas far more impressive evidence that tends to show feminism is wrong will be ignored.

As an example a little while back the CDC published the results of an 18,000 (that's over a hundred times as many people as this study) national study asking about rape which discovered that men are raped just as often as women are -- and this was not about prison rape, this was a telephone survey of ordinary people.

Now here's my question. How come everyone has heard of this tiny little bit of unreproduced research (and you're like the tenth person to come in and ask about this thing in the last few months), but nobody has heard that this gold standard in research with a massive sample size found men raped as often as women?

The_Patriarchy · 2012-10-14T20:51:06+00:00

I suspect it's related to this mentality which was posted here just 1 hour before you made this post. When you lower standards for women to achieve X (e.g. affirmative action, quotas, etc.), people will assume that women achieving X are less capable than men achieving X. It is discrimination and it is gender bias...but more quotas/affirmative action/etc. probably aren't going to fix it.

Stephen_Morgan · 2012-10-14T19:47:13+00:00

There have been plenty of legitimate studies, eg by Riach and Rich (2006), and they generally show that when other factors are controlled for women are more likely to get interviews for jobs than men, the interview process is nmore subjective and harder to test. I've certainly seen such studies from Israel, England and Australia and across many thousands of applications to a wide variety or jobs. All the other studies I've seen have shown bias in favour of women.

Now, just maybe the position of laboratory manager is the one and only job where men face discrimination in their favour. Maybe this is just a statistical freak. Possibly the study is fraudulent, having been conducted by ideologues. Doesn't mean much, either way.

rightsbot · 2012-10-14T17:20:18+00:00

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namae_nanka · 2012-10-15T01:46:08+00:00

a trip down the memory lane. The swedish study in nature in 1997 proving sexism in academia.

http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/the-leaks-in-the-pipeline-found/comment-page-1/#comment-716

""we should hire based on qualifications" argument, because it's clear that people don't actually do that."

let's see it get replicated. Many studies that show that no bias, or women had a slight bias, yet look up the citations on the 'bias against women'(the swedish study) one on google.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/science/15tier.html

edit: the NSF no bias is funny, go to the end here.

http://www.academia.org/title-ix-conquers-science/

edit2: confused NSF with something else, apparently there is bias, but against women.

http://www.safs.ca/april2010/sommers.htm

Unconfidence · 2012-10-15T03:16:47+00:00

I think it's a study, and that it's probably pointing out a valid problem.

But I just don't think the fact that women still face prejudice demeans the fact that men face it as well. One of the shining failures of both the feminist and MR movements are their intolerance for one another. It really has gotten to the point where many Feminists don't believe in the existence of pertinent misandry and many MRA's don't believe in the existence of pertinent misogyny.

We're no different from liberals and conservatives, so usy screaming about the differences that we don't see how alike our goals are.

2012-10-14T18:11:34+00:00

Here is a paper you might find interesting

http://www.reddit.com/r/mensrightslinks/comments/sy2da/educationreviewsex_differences_in_math_intensive/

smurfberries · 2012-10-14T18:28:45+00:00

From the materials and methods section (PDF): "We were interested in how shared subtle gender biases (resulting from pervasive cultural messages) might impact perceptions of female students. As a result, we sought a measure that would tap a subtle, modern form of gender bias that often exists outside of individuals’ conscious awareness or intention to harm women. Thus, we used the Modern Sexism Scale, a commonly used and well-validated scale that functions as an indirect measure of modern views toward women and gender."

The authors looked specifically for bias against women and used methods to ensure they would find it.

I'm surprised PNAS would publish this study.

Liverotto · 2012-10-15T10:24:18+00:00

What if it is not sexism, what if it is evidence that women are not on par with men?

Can you even ponder the concept that we might not be equal?

eggilicious · 2012-10-14T17:25:37+00:00

It only really holds for the US which is where the study was carried out. It does suggest that there is some discrimination against women but this is not unexpected. University labs can be intense places and I would not be surprised if they were less likely to hire women purely because they can take maternity leave. I work in a university lab and it is a massive blow to the department when a lab manager leaves because they have some much specialised skills and information specific to that lab. I suspect there is still some gender based discrimination but one study is never enough to conclude anything

SwanOfAvon22 · 2012-10-14T19:32:46+00:00

To answer your question, any discrimination based on gender is bad. Period. We don't like it against women any more than we like it against men. There is no one here I have encountered who would give you a different answer.

That being said, I've read multiple studies where gender bias against women in STEM fields was found, even among female hirers, and when interviewed or made aware of the bias, their reply was that they "perceived women as having an easier time in school."

Quota systems look like an effective way of countering discrimination until you consider that they can also end up promoting it.

AloysiusC · 2012-10-14T22:25:32+00:00

We cannot deny that there is sexist bias against women and that it sucks. What we're denying is that there is NO sexist bias against men. And some of us, me included, are saying that the sum of all sexism in the west isn't nearly as harmful and devaluing against women as it is against men. There is so much public discussion on women's issues and practically none on men's issues. As long as boys are dying as result of publicly approved genital mutilation, I will not shed a tear over a little bias that favors men in certain professions. It's about priorities.

memymineown · 2012-10-14T17:57:35+00:00

I don't think it is true but if more studies done by independent, unbiased researchers come to the same conclusion then I may change my opinion.

Edit: Changed say to same

DerpaNerb · 2012-10-14T18:31:22+00:00

I even looked at the pdf and couldn't find any of the actual results. I'm skeptical of something that doesn't provide (at least as far as I can tell) any actual numbers. Especially when the numbers would be so easy to represent seeing as they used a "scale" on everything (the salaries weren't picked out of thin air, they had to be 1 of 7 choices ranging from 15k to 50k in 5k increments).

They also used two totally independent groups for each gender of the applicants. It seems that unless there was some sort of control survey, then I don't see how this would work.

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