[ooopsnevermind]

"Hiring because someone is <insert underrepresented group here>" isn't the goal, IMO, and I think it sounds like your sister's career advisor did her a disservice by describing it that way. I also don't think her career advisor's POV is true, FWIW.

As a woman in STEM, I don't want someone to hire me just because I'm a woman. I want someone to 1) think I'm awesome at what I do, and 2) by the way I happen to be a woman. But I also think it's true that if 2) is a fact about you, it's harder for you to prove 1) than it would be otherwise, and that's not right. My belief is that the reason for encouraging diversity initiatives are that there are lots of talented women (and other minority groups) out there who are being overlooked but deserve to get noticed and hired, and the goal is always to surface talented people to hire, women or otherwise.

[fsociety]

Yes but is the issue here solved by diversity hiring i.e. doing whatever it takes to hire more women or is the issue here solved by redefining how the workplace operates and making it something that enables women to succeed and enjoy the work without being highly aggressive? Actually it isn't just about women in software development, men should be included too. Plenty of men in software development are atypical compared to other men.

I'm a man in STEM - weird to put it that way - but I have a lot of issues in dealing with hyper aggressive people in the workplace. Unfortunately I've found that sometimes the only way to be heard in the workplace is to be aggressive and repeat myself over and over again.

Being aggressive in the workplace has resulted in me, against a company full of people who don't appreciate methodical software development, introducing less bugs, having more time to work with customer issues, and spending more time on testing and maintenance. Admittedly, it's very emotionally and mentally fatiguing.

As I write this I'm thinking about nurses and how insanely aggressive you have to be in a hospital, which is a women dominated field. I suppose that the difference is that the work is incredibly high-impact whereas it's easy in software development to feel that your work is for nothing because often it is.

I don't know what the solution is, or if the question I'm asking is the right question, but I'm fairly certain that the current practice of diversity hiring doesn't help the issue but instead hurts it more. Same thing with this unconscious bias training.

Now, I do strongly believe that encouraging women to consider STEM in school is a very good idea and that it opens a lot of doors that otherwise may of not been open. I believe this, in the long-term, is a giant step in the right direction because of cultural pressures and norms for people at a very young age.

[ooopsnevermind]

A couple of different reactions from my POV:

1) "Now, I do strongly believe that encouraging women to consider STEM in school is a very good idea and that it opens a lot of doors that otherwise may of not been open. I believe this, in the long-term, is a giant step in the right direction because of cultural pressures and norms for people at a very young age."

100% agree! I was lucky enough to be blissfully oblivious at an early age, but as I grew older it became very clear to me from middle school onwards that I was considered "unusual" as a girl so interested in STEM, and people had lowered expectations for me, even from well-intentioned people I loved and respected. Luckily I'm pretty boneheaded and I like to prove people wrong, but it's unfair to expect and require that of women to stick with STEM. I agree it's a real shame, and there's just no reason to discourage people early on.

2) The problem is that even the perception of aggression in and of itself includes some gender bias issues. Multiple studies have confirmed that within the workplace, women are disproportionately for showing assertiveness and labeled "aggressive", versus men, when the evaluator is male. However, when the evaluator is female there is no such bias.

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/bowles.pdf

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-price-women-leaders-pay-for...

So if the goal really is to achieve a workplace where aggressiveness is no longer perpetuating gender inequality in the workplace, that would actually be even more support for encouraging more women to join the team. If you were surprised by this statistic, as many people (both men and women) are, I think that's an example of why unconscious bias training is helpful, because that helps all of us resist these tendencies we are unaware that we have.

3) Aggression, while one part of the problem, is far from the only piece, unfortunately. It's fine and dandy to tell me "this isn't an aggressive workplace," but there's actually a lot more needed. Do you have a thoughtful maternity (and paternity, to show that you understand that women alone aren't responsible for childcare) leave policy? Are women not disproportionately interrupted in meetings, or penalized for speaking up (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839212439994)? Will I be given fair professional feedback and evaluations (https://www.wsj.com/articles/gender-bias-at-work-turns-up-in..., https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-gender-bias-corrupts-performance...)? Can I rest assured that your workplace isn't a bro enclave where the male manager who interviewed me secretly emails the company to tell them that he thinks I'm attractive and pressures me for personal contact information, when I want to be taken seriously as a professional and evaluated on my actual skills (yes this really happened)? Can I reliably network with my colleagues in and out of the office without worrying whether they will turn into "surprise" dates that have 0% to do with the professional intent I had, forcing me to extricate myself from wasted time and energy again and again? I used to think it was just me, but literally every single one of my female friends in Bay Area tech has some story along these lines.

It's true that these are all things where sure, I could cross my fingers and trust that the existing, mostly male-run institutions are enlightened enough to recognize the pervasiveness of these issues, and fix them, and solve everything for the future. But truth be told, I think they'll get fixed a lot faster when there are more women in the workplace and in leadership who have personally experienced, and think about, these issues, for them to get fixed anytime soon. I certainly did not realize how pervasive these issues were before beginning my own career in tech--it had to happen to me before I believed it, sadly. Today I'm lucky to be working at a company that cares deeply about these issues and creates an environment that I feel proud to recruit other women into, vs. one where I feel I can't do so in good conscience.

Again, though, I do completely disavow the notion that hiring more women should mean lowering the bar. I am in total agreement that that would be a terrible idea that does no good to anyone, and in fact that's just an insulting idea to women anyway. I just simply believe that there is a lot more talent out there than gets into the door / feels welcome to stay in the industry, and that there are concrete things we can do about that.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! Would be happy to chat more about any of the perspectives I'm sharing here.

(FWIW, I know this is tangential to the point of your argument but, I also don't think it's true that hospitals are women-dominated. Perhaps you are referring to the fact that women hold 75% of healthcare jobs; however, only 25% of hospital CEOs are women and only 21% of execs and board members are women, so it might be more accurate to say, women only dominate the least influential positions, where they would have the least say in policy and culture-norm setting. And even among doctors, nurses, and the other job positions you might be thinking of, there's a significant gender wage gap and men receive appreciably higher salaries in almost every single one. For these reasons I would not call it a woman-dominated field. http://fortune.com/2017/03/08/international-womens-day-healt...)

[fsociety]

I'm very happy that you made a thoughtful reply, I was getting into a fairly long discussion with a coworker about James Damore and how women fit into a modern tech workplace. I think the most disappointing thing about that whole ordeal was that a lot of potential discussion was instantly shutdown by a few people. Anyways that is me sidetracking.

I'll have to read the first two links later - super busy right now - but I have heard before (and seen a few times) that assertiveness is often termed as aggressiveness in women which is horribly unfortunate. I also do think that I really simplified the issue a lot in my previous post, partly because I don't have all of these experiences or talk with much people who do (at least in tech). I can see how having more women speak about their experiences openly can help other people understand although it's such a hard issue because what if they get identified at their workplace..

Ugh surprise dates sound like the absolute worst. I know quite a few women who have stories about this in and out of tech. I strongly agree with you that having more women in the workplace and as leaders will combat a lot of these issues. I also agree that we don't need to lower the bar to do this. It has been my own personal experience that social norms and expectations from peers can really destroy people who otherwise would be at the top of their field.

I should've been more specific and was strictly referring to nurses. The only reason I brought it up is because during school I met some nurses and heard some horror stories about men becoming nurses. Particularly in social situations men aren't 'respected' if they are a nurse which is a silly norm since they are working on the floor in a high impact job saving people's lives. I do recognize that there is another issue with women not holding influential positions where they can have a large affect on culture.