Apple responds to Silicon Valley gender gap, sends recruiters to 'Women in Computing' conference

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 51
    nick29nick29 Posts: 111member
    A good example of "human rights groups" like "community activists", merely being code words for radical political groups. Do you think a proudly liberal company like Apple seriously discriminated against women or minorities over the years? If they did, rethink your definition of liberalism, if they didn't, maybe there are biological differences between men and women and races that lead them to engage in differing behavior, including the employment they seek.

    Whatever you think, kudos to AppleInsider for not stifling these comments under a "politics, religion, etc." category limited to a tiny minority
  • Reply 42 of 51
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,275member
    Your next president is pretty certainly a woman, because there's nobody in the clown car from the other party that's going to get the job ... white privilege much, Inkling?
  • Reply 43 of 51
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    Stories like this just seem to show how certain posters are inherently sexists and or racist.

    Glad you pointed that out. I was just thinking, as I read my way through the comments, that a story like this once in a while can be quite useful; it allows me to easily identify candidates for my ignore list. Brings em all out, showing their true colors and negative biases. Lol!
  • Reply 44 of 51
    I'm all for workplace equality, but it seems to me that proactively recruiting amongst any specific demographic is reverse discrimination against anyone who isn't in that demographic. If this time is going to be styled as an era of "new enlightenment," employers should be blind to any demographic information in their choices. Guilt should not be a motivating factor in choosing who to hire. May the most qualified PERSON always get the job. And if more of those qualified people happen to be overwhelmingly from one demographic group, the THAT'S THE WAY IT IS.

    If Mr. Cook is that sensitive to white male domination in the tech industry, he should call up Condoleeza Rice and offer her his job.
  • Reply 45 of 51
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Stories like this just seem to show how certain posters are inherently sexists and or racist.

    I think that's an overly simplistic interpretation.
  • Reply 46 of 51

    Were posts deleted or is that just my memory making me worthless again?

  • Reply 47 of 51
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    seankill wrote: »
    If Apple is 90% male, that is fine as long sex didn't play a role in it.

    The argument that is brought up as a response to that is that there's sexism operating on a subconscious level. Once subconscious, unprovable reasons are brought in, there's no chance of rationalising anything. The program mentioned in the article is described here:

    http://www.ncwit.org/programs-campaigns/pacesetters

    "NCWIT Pacesetters is a unique fast-track program where company and university leaders work together to increase their organization’s number of technical women at an accelerated pace. NCWIT Pacesetters employ innovative methods and set quantifiable goals to recruit untapped talent pools of “Net New Women” — technical women who would otherwise pursue non?computing careers or would be at risk of leaving."

    If you could accelerate or fast-track the achievement of skills then everyone would be doing it so that's not what they're doing, they are setting 'quantifiable goals' aka gender quotas and setting out to fill them. It's interesting that their own organisation looks to be predominantly female and white:

    1000

    There's needs to be an arbitrary quota-setting agency to balance that out to be perfectly even numbers. There's an article here about the state of employment between the sexes:

    http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21600998-after-falling-years-proportion-mums-who-stay-home-rising-return

    "the proportion of stay-at-home mothers has been rising steadily for the past 15 years. A quarter of stay-at-home mothers have college degrees. Taken as a whole, the group includes mothers at both ends of the social scale. Some are highly educated bankers’ wives who choose not to work because they don’t need the money and would rather spend their time hot-housing their toddlers so that they may one day get into Harvard. Others are poorer but calculate that, after paying for child care, the money they make sweeping floors or serving burgers does not justify the time away from their little ones.

    The increase in stay-at-home mothering sits oddly with a second big trend affecting women’s lives: their relative success in the labour market. Women now hold half of the jobs in America, up from 32% in 1964.

    At the highly skilled end of the jobs market, women are in a strong position: they earn 57% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded by universities. The same is true in the low-skilled bit. The industries where the government expects the most employment growth between now and 2022, such as health care and hospitality, are mostly dominated by women.

    How can women be taking over the workplace while simultaneously opting out of it? The answer is that men have been quitting the labour force even faster. Overall labour-force participation (for both sexes) has been declining since 2000, but for men it has fallen faster (from 75% to 69%) than for women (60% to 57%). In 40% of households with children a woman is now the primary breadwinner, though in most of those cases (26% of the total) that is because she is the only one.

    Where women continue to lag is in their earnings relative to men. “The average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns,” said the president on April 8th, adding: “That’s an embarrassment. It is wrong.” As he signed a pair of executive orders that would compel federal contractors to provide data on the pay and sex of their workforce, he tut-tutted: “Equal pay for equal work. It’s not that complicated.”

    Actually, it is a bit more complicated. If employers could really get the same work done for 77 cents on the dollar by hiring women, they would do so, and their shareholders would gleefully pocket the extra profits. The 77 cents statistic compares apples with oranges.

    The nonsense of “77 cents”
    Men in “full-time” work do indeed make more than women, but this is partly because they work longer hours (full-time here means 35 or more hours a week). Men also cluster in some of the better-paid professions: they are 87% of engineers but only 16% of teachers. They do more dangerous jobs: 92% of work-related deaths are of men. Most important, men are far less likely than women to take hefty career breaks when children arrive. Single, childless women earn 95 cents for every dollar a single, childless man makes, which is hardly the stuff of campaign slogans."

    This is shown in the Bureau of Labor stats:

    http://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2012.pdf

    Average hours spent working per day: men=3.74 hours; women=2.67 hours (this will likely average weekends, vacations, unemployed, part-time). Men work 40% more so even if women get 77% of the pay, men are working 40% more for 30% more pay. You can't simply assess job roles and salaries. Hours worked and performance need to be considered too. Should Tim Cook (CEO) get paid more than Meg Whitman (CEO). I should think so, unless she's also getting up at 4:30am and successfully running one of the most profitable companies in the world instead of destroying one.

    There was a recent story here about someone employed in the games industry:

    http://kotaku.com/waiting-five-hours-to-get-fired-in-five-minutes-1643577163

    "When I arrived at [SMALL GAMING STUDIO], I realized that out of the 30 people there, I was the most experienced, even though I had only five years in interactive entertainment at the time. The CEO was in his early 20s, and had a habit of hiring attractive young women fresh out of college with no relevant degree or experience and quickly promoting them to top management roles within the company. Much of the leadership team would not show up at the office until 2-3pm, and they would routinely schedule mandatory meetings for us at 9pm. When I approached the recruiter (in lieu of an actual HR department) about my concerns, she broke down and told me that she was going to quit, because she was afraid of being sued.... the CEO had asked her to do things she considered unethical, and she feared for her career if she were to be further associated with the company."

    That's sexism that I'm sure women don't complain about - hiring incompetent yet attractive women for cushy management roles.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/9822271/Rise-in-stay-at-home-fathers-fuelled-by-growing-numbers-of-female-breadwinners.html

    "Men now make up nearly 10 per cent of those who care for children while their partner goes out to work, official employment statistics revealed today.

    despite the increase in stay-at-home fathers, men were still significantly less likely than women to be the main child carer in families.

    For now children are still overwhelmingly seen as mothers' responsibility and it's women who tend to put their careers on hold to look after them, which in part explains the lack of women on boards and the gender pay gap."

    Relevant facts:
    - women hold 50% of overall jobs so arbitrary quota-setting in selective job categories while not doing the same for men where women dominate will push female employment over 50% overall
    - women have babies, some of them like it and it means they work less and get paid less, some don't work at all
    - women who choose not to have children get paid pretty much the same as men in the same jobs

    Nobody in the public sphere gets to say these things though because of guilt by association. If you were to ask what would a sexist male white supremacist say when asked about race and gender ratios, the answer would probably be:

    'I'm perfectly ok with a majority white male dominated workforce'

    So people in the public sphere be it politics or business automatically try to say the opposite even if it causes the opposite effect i.e a disproportionately high ratio of the minor groups relative to the population, which makes life harder for the original group who btw are supporting stay at home mothers.

    That isn't to say there's no discrimination, there always will be but whatever amount exists is simply not affecting the employment market any more.
    nagromme wrote:
    because someone told them that it's "feminism" and evil, despite not knowing what the word actually means

    What the word was originally defined as and how people associate it with how they act are different things. The people who do fight for true equality should use a different term that has no gender bias.

    http://www.feminist.com/askamy/feminism/604_fem10.html

    "Hi, I am a college student and consider myself a feminist. The other day, a young man started a debate with me about feminist ideals, and looking back, I am dissappointed that I didn't have a more articuate argument. He specifically asked, "name one thing that women can do better than men" and said that "men can do many things better than women, but the opposite is not true." What would you say to a statement like this? Or can you direct me to some literature that would help me better defend feminist theory?

    Thanks, Meg"

    "I have actually had many conversations just like the ones that you had. One example that I have found that works -- or seems to at least make a dent of impact -- is that when women first starting running the marathon, which was about 25 years ago, the time difference between the first man and the first woman was over 1 hour. Within those 25 years, the difference has shrunk to almost 12 minutes.

    What this proves to me is that if women are given equal access, they can accomplish what men can -- it's just that we aren't always given equal access. And the point isn't that every women be as strong as every man, but that each individual stregth be valued. For instance, when women first became fire fighters, they didn't think that women would be good because they wre less likely to through people over their shoulders. Turns out that isn't the best way to rescue anyone from a fire anyway -- so that proved that each way was valued and men even learned to do it "the female way."

    I hope that helps, Amy"

    http://www.feminist.com/askamy/feminism/fem129.html

    "Hey, I am a 17-year-old female who is in major need of help. I have to write a paper on why women are better than men. I have some ideas but they aren't very good and I don't have enough to write a good paper. I am arguing this point with a guy in my class. I need to make strong points (and good ones at that.) I have to win this debate but I don't think I can. At the rate I am moving at now I am not going to win. I know this sounds incredibly lame but I need help getting good information or opinions. Do you think you could help me? It will be greatly appreciated. If you would like I could send you a copy when I am done writing it. Thank you - Meg"

    "Thanks for your note to FEMINIST.COM. I think the reason you are having a hard time finding information on "why women are better than men" is that it is impossible to make such generalizations. For instance, there are certainly some women who are better than certain men just as there are some men who are better than certain women. The point of feminism isn't to prove that women are better than men--because that's not possible. It's to prove that women and men are equally capable of achieving similar things.

    Amy"

    At least the replies try to steer people away from trying to gain superiority but sadly that's what people acting under the role of feminism promote far too often. When asked about using a more inclusive name:

    http://www.feminist.com/askamy/feminism/0711_fem05.html

    "I'd like to know your opinion about a debate I've been having with a male friend of mine. He claims that the name "feminism" should be changed for the movement (he hasn't made any suggestions to what it should be called instead). He says that a new name would make it more available to men and the "less educated." I am thoroughly against this, feeling that it would take away from what the movement stands for—women's issues and equality—but he won't back down."

    "I often hear from people that we should change the name to “humanist” or something else more inclusive. I argue that it's often what's behind the name that's so threatening; therefore, if we change the name, the new word will just end up being a bad word. In terms of it being a name more welcoming to male participants—I think it's tough. It’s primarily a woman's movement, and if the name is more gender ambiguous, I'm not sure it will have the same impact."

    It's always contradictory - it's either a move for equality or it's not. If it's to promote women solely then it's not inclusive nor is it about equality because it ignores areas where females dominate.

    Here's the icing on the cake:

    http://www.feminist.com/askamy/feminism/503_fem10.html

    "Why do feminists, or groups of feminists, corrupt the entire concept of a "feminist revolution" by excluding almost half of the world's population. My question can also include transgendered persons, who are repeatedly left on the periphery of "safe/women-only spaces". It's terribly frustrating. If I can't take my male friends to places such as a Women's Salon discussing Sexual Harassment...something that their counterparts participate in on a regular basis...and show them the error in their ways and the negative ways it makes women feel, then how will we ever proactively seek to end such discrimination and harassment.

    How is being exclusionary effective?"

    "I total agree with you. I get many emails from young women asking about "male bashing," etc... And while I think most people come to understand it as a myth -- it is a prevalent one and one that takes some time to reverse."

    Male-bashing among feminists is all a myth. No, I'm afraid not.

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/30-Reasons-Why-Women-Are-Better-Than-Men/307940384361
    http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/g1711/women-better-than-men-things/
    http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/women-are-better-than-men

    The biggest problem I think that comes from the feminist movement is the generalisms. There's hardly ever specific problems detailed, it's always general phrases like 'women are oppressed or underpaid or there aren't enough of them in charge'. The statements raising awareness get applause from feminist groups but without problems being detailed, how can people know there's a successful change? You can see this in Emma Watson's speech here about feminism at the UN:


    [VIDEO]


    She complains about girls dropping out of sports at a young age so as not to be unattractive to the boys. Oh no, women like men and want to be attractive to them. Guess what, men like women and try to work out and play sports to attract them too. She thinks it's right she's paid the same as her male counterparts, well she has $60m so it's hard to really assess if that's more or less. Apparently she has more than Rupert Grint at $50m but less than Daniel Radcliffe at $110m. They're all overpaid as far as I can tell. She wants the right to make decisions about her own body, that's fine, do that.

    Even during her speech, she says that she had no hurdles in her life but says 'not all women have received the same rights I have, statistically very few have been' yet no data nor specifics provided. That typically happens in less developed countries.

    One thing she brought up was suicide rates, which is a very interesting set of stats:

    http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/06/11/mens-suicide-rate-is-3-times-that-of-women/55897.html

    "almost four times as many males as females die by suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

    Unemployment was the strongest social risk factor among women, whereas being single was the strongest among men."

    The man-hating and supremacy of what feminism has been corrupted into is driving sexes apart. The hostility that some women demonstrate as well as the lack of desire to be attractive to men does push them away from men so men are lonelier and killing themselves at a high rate.

    There should be a way to achieve equality without the hostility but I don't think it's going to happen. I can see society being very damaged by these movements overall because of the way they are presented. People need to stop being disingenuous about problems by using generalisms like 'gender gap' without providing specific examples of what the problem is so that we can address it and know that it has been addressed. If the problem is that women don't like working in tech then that isn't a problem, that's their choice.
    Were posts deleted or is that just my memory making me worthless again?

    The more political ones were removed. Certain terms tend to drive the discussion into full on politics and away from the topic.
  • Reply 48 of 51

    Last article I read with actual data had the female percentage of the tech workforce at several big players within a couple points of the female percentage of tech graduates.

     

    You can't compare your workforce to the general population, you have to compare it to the demographics of those graduating with the appropriate training. It baffles me how many people don't understand this.

     

    What they need to do is encourage more women to get degrees in tech fields.

  • Reply 49 of 51
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post

     
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lkrupp View Post

     

    I don’t want Apple hiring engineers because of their race or gender or any other politically correct reason. I want Apple to hire engineers who are the very best at their craft. I don’t care if they are women, little green men, or Al Sharpton himself. If they’re the best then hire them.


    Of course Apple should. I have no doubt that Apple will. After all, it's in the company's self-interest to do so.

     

    But the point is, are there things they can do to tap into the broader talent pool by casting a wider net across gender and ethnicities? It sometimes requires pro-active effort. Are there things they can do to make their corporate cultures or work habits a little more welcoming? (Silicon Valley culture is quite famous, rightly or wrongly, for its frat-nerd-boy culture). Again, this requires sending a message from the top. Many businesses have done that (e.g., financial services, consumer products), and successfully adapted.

     

    As an aside, some of the finest, most hardworking people who have coded for me are women.


     

     

    I disagree.

     

    If you're 'pro-active' in targeting a certain group, that's discrimination. If you actively strive to change the culture, then you may succeed, but all you are doing is replacing one culture for another. And all that effort is simply distracting from the pursuit of excellence, which is the only thing that counts.

  • Reply 50 of 51
    plovellplovell Posts: 824member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by RadarTheKat View Post

     



    Like the way they sometimes conduct orchestra auditions with the player positioned behind a screen so the judges cannot know their race or gender.  Excellent idea.




    True. But that doesn't work as well with an interview, unfortunately.

  • Reply 51 of 51
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Dunks View Post

     

    There is intrinsic value in actively pursuing diversity in the workplace. Companies full of middle class, white men tend to make middle class, white men decisions. This has the potential to be a problem if your customer base is broader than just middle class, white men.


     

     

    That's a specious argument.

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