That ratio indicates that there is some biased process leading to the ratio, and that process should be de-biased. Presuming women and men have equal math abilities (I assume this is true) and equal desire to obtain degrees (not entirely sure; this is a very controversial topic) you would expect that an unbiased selection process would generate 50% male/female ratio. Again, many assumptions and conclusions in what i just said are not absolutely certain.
Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.
> That ratio indicates that there is some biased process leading to the ratio, and that process should be de-biased.
Or that people have different preferences?
> Presuming women and men have equal math abilities (I assume this is true) and equal desire to obtain degrees (not entirely sure; this is a very controversial topic) you would expect that an unbiased selection process would generate 50% male/female ratio.
If by that you mean that "for each degree, the percentage of the people that want to get it follows the repartition in the population", it is absolutely not true. I don't know why or what mechanism are at play here, but assuming that this is all bias seems very weird.
> Again, many assumptions and conclusions in what i just said are not absolutely certain.
I think this is a really weak reason to collect racial statistics in the first place.
> Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.
That's true, but you can also base yourself on things like revenu which seems to be more universal than race.
> Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.
I hope you realize this process started over 50 years ago. Most fields turned and are now dominated by women. The few fields that are still not dominated by women are probably that way for another reason than discrimination, women are far too good at taking over fields for some discrimination to stop them from doing so.
Nothign I said in my comment above is my current position, it's a description of the thinking of people who run departments. Note that I very carefully said the idea of whether genders have preferences, is a controversial topic.
In my own field, biology, many subfields do have equal gender ratios (went from skewed to equal over last 20 years). However, having worked in Silicon Valley at tech firms, I can say that they (and the programs that feed them) still have very skewed ratios.
I'm aware of these processes and how long they've lasted; about 100 years ago, Harvard limited the number of Jewish people who could be accepted. Jews were excluded from working at "white-shoe law firms" (the ones that did high-value business deals) and instead generally ran law firms that handled "the dirty stuff" (divorces etc). Eventually, Jews became much more accepted, explicit Jewish quotas at universities were removed, and white shoe law firms hire (and have partners) who are Jewish.
I don't think it's good science to say that every difference comes from discimination. For example, the poorer you are, the higher are your chances of dropping out. This is not discrimination against poor people. But, at least to me, this is a problem that we should try to fix.
Figuring out whether or not there is discrimination is not saying that any differences comes from discrimination. Identifying differences is the first step in doing that, not the last step.
That’s the point of the entire article. It’s a fuzzy problem that can’t be solved by strict categorization like that, which is in itself a form of discrimination. You design your admissions process to be as fair as possible, not “tune it” to get the metrics right.
I believe this, and similar things in job applications, is mostly so they can generate stats that would reveal if there was discrimination going on.
It feels weird because you're providing the information to the people who are being held accountable, and the idea is to get to a place where the information they are asking you for doesn't matter, but life is complicated.
They will always have an option “would rather not say” and are used for reporting. Universities in particular are keen to ensure they have a mix of students that isn’t skewed.
Which is racist. It’s good intentioned, but it’s also almost the definition of racism.
I don’t particularly mind affirmative action policies but I wish people were more honest with themselves how it’s really an imposition of one kind of injustice in an attempt to remedy another.
The world is messy and complicated, it may be warranted, but it seems to me these kind of measures really have to be viewed as temporary measures and aimed to phase out as soon as a certain level of “target equality” has been achieved.
> Which is racist. It’s good intentioned, but it’s also almost the definition of racism.
I tend to agree with that. I think the idea is that positive discrimination can offset previously encountered negative discrimination to some degree and level the field by doing so. I don't have strong opinion about it, but it seems like the best method we have to make a real impact. Everything else seems too slow.
But it also could brew resentiments that end up making people hate eachother. Affirmative action should help people of a similar socioeconomic background somehow without involving race. People do need that helping hand but if they happen to tick off the wrong boxes they’re out of luck.
Every time affirmative-action comes up for discussion in HN, someone in the comments entirely re-invents european style social-democracy from first principles just to avoid giving any advantage to African American's based on race.
I'm never sure whether to be saddened or hopeful about this phenomenon. Is it a new generation growing up and realizing that race is an outdated social construct and they could just help everyone and anyone with sensible policies, or is it just people repeating "You know who the real racists are?" style talking points, it's hard to tell.
I'm confused as to how asking to be evaluated on one's merits and not race has anything to do with European social democracies. Affirmative action/"positive" discrimination occurs in Europe as well.
The comment I replied to was talking about helping people from a specific socioeconomic background.
The implication, and very sensible one at that, is that just because you are from a poor family, doesn't mean you don't have "merit". Some portion of an Ivy League credential reflects not your merit or potential or contribution to society, but inherited privilege, connections, luck etc.
Meritocracy in such a situation is like having a fair race when one competitor has a motorbike. Yes they are objectively faster than the runners in certain circumstances, but that's not due to their merit as a runner, from a combination of natural aptitude and years of dedicated training and focus, it's because they're on a motorbike.
If you really need something delivered quickly, then the short term solution is to ask the guy with the motorbike. If the aim is to get the human race moving faster in general, then giving everyone a motorbike is the answer, not pretending against all evidence that the people with motorbikes are inherently superior beings and just naturally good at running.
Then you can choose the best motorbike rider and get something that approximates a real meritocracy.
> re-invents european style social-democracy from first principles just to avoid giving any advantage to African American's based on race.
What "just to avoid"? Many people on HN are from such European style social democracies, there is no "just to avoid", we just think that is a much better system than the racialized democracy American democrats wants.
> the racialized democracy American democrats wants.
This doesn't describe anything I recognise as reality and I thought I'd already headed this off by mentioning the "You know who the real racists are?" talking points.
I'm glad we all agree that racism and sexism is bad now, I suppose that's progress of some kind.
