[zeppelin101]

I can only speak from what I've personally observed and from what has happened to a few men I know. The gist of it is this: given a 'soft' role in a company, especially a tech company, those roles are in large part reserved for women. Consider a tech company - the people in the front lines will almost invariably be men. They were the ones who probably studied Computer Science or a comparable major in college, afterall. So from a diversity standpoint, almost all tech companies are stacked with men already - because they focus on tech and because the actual techies are almost entirely comprised of men. Then, when it comes to the softer roles in the company, such as HR/recruiting/administration, those roles will very largely be filled by women (who studied psychology, communications, english, or something similar). I suppose I can only speak about this as it applies to the tech industry, as that is what I'm familiar with. But tech is eating the world, so if it doesn't yet apply to some of the other industries, it soon will.

[Caveman_Coder]

It isn't just the "soft" roles anymore...when I first started applying for positions I got absolutely nothing when I was applying as a male...I literally only changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, reapplied at all the same companies and within the week I heard back from each and every company...they don't want average males...preference is for women now...at least from my experience

[zeppelin101]

Was this an experiment you ran out of desperation? When these companies responded to you (as 'Joanna'), did you proceed with the interview process?

[Caveman_Coder]

> Was this an experiment you ran out of desperation?

Well, I wasn't getting any call-backs for a while, so kinda...I'd go check out the career pages and every single one of them had these various sections "women," "minorities," "veterans," etc...pretty much every category other than white guy from average state school that doesn't have rich parents or professional connections...then I clicked on one of the links and all it showed were "women in tech" and how much they supported women...all the pics on their website were of women...it was okay, I get it, you don't want/need any more white guys...I thought it would be funny to apply as a woman without changing a single thing on my resume other than the name...and lo and behold, I called emails/call-backs from every single company I had previously been rejected by...I'm not even kidding, same college, same professional experience, same extra-curricular activities...everything the same other than name/sex.

> When these companies responded to you (as 'Joanna'), did you proceed with the interview process?

I did not...if they were going to be sexist I had no desire to work for them at that point, plus it left such a sour taste in my mouth. I did find a company that wasn't sexist so I ended up going with them in the end.

[throwaway1748]

You should write a longer post about this, perhaps on Medium, and share it. I think it's a topic worthy of more discussion

[Caveman_Coder]

I'm not a wordsmith...

Plus, what would I write? It's kind of straightforward sexism.

1. White guy applies for job, no responses.

2. White guy reapplies and only changes name/sex to appear female, receives responses within the week.

3. End.

I could have also just changed my race and the experiment would have had the same results.

[zeppelin101]

Glad to hear you found a company you liked in the end.

[Caveman_Coder]

Thanks! The current role I'm in has me working on software that controls the electric grid...pretty cool stuff in my opinion, and it fits in nicely with my electrical trades background. Working mostly with C/Perl/Linux.

[smogcutter]

If you grant that, then getting a "hard" tech job should be similarly discouraging for women (many would argue it's often much more so). How does this add up to an "anti-male" society?

We're not talking about someone having a harder than average time finding a job, but about guys staying home playing videogames instead of working. I submit that if someone thinks anti male bias is the reason they're on the couch playing call of duty all day, they're mistaken.