You would need to connect men not being as prevalent in child care profession roles to some sort of systemic harm. Or women not being as prevalent in construction worker roles. Just because there's a discrepancy between the two genders doesn't mean there's systemic harm stemming from it.
the harm in child care and education should be obvious: children need role models of both genders. in no other profession is it as important for gender parity to be enforced. so at least in that area there is most certainly a systemic harm if one gender dominates.
every adult the children come in contact with is a role model. children don't select their role models. the amount of time that children spend in kindergarten and school makes that inevitable. for good and for bad. you can't not count on children getting their role models from there, but you can't even avoid it. children need role models from both genders. and if there is no gender parity (or something reasonably close) in education, then they are not getting the role models they need.
I've thought a bit about this since you made the comment, and I think your point about education in particular has a lot of merit. I would normally dispute how you phrased your last sentence, but I've noticed this decline in how boys perform in school, and also noticed that the teaching profession is highly gendered. Thanks for the discussion, you've given me a bunch to think about.
You can always claim harm, but proving it is a different story.
Policies like that are based on results of psychological research such as "stereotype threat", which has recently fallen victim to the reproducibility crisis.
In other words, the entire social engineering structure of such laws may be a house built on sand.
Scope matters. On the level of the entire economy? Possibly yes, but you haven't shown that the entire economy will discriminate against X or Y; respective preferences of individual players may well balance out.
On the level of a single Acme, Inc.? What if that particular organization is unofficially hostile to a particular gender? I would say that in such case, it is more harmful to join it blindly and then suffer from the generally unfriendly environment than to steer clear of them in time.
I wouldn't personally like to become an employee in a corporation that prefers not to employ men and is only forced to do so by external powers. And I would prefer them to be honest and advertise that openly, to save my time and theirs from making an unhappy match.
How does what is advertised to you affect your opportunities? Opportunities are things that are available to you. Obviously people can seek out opportunities. They don't have to have them thrust in front of them.
If a company gets 0% response from a certain group, why should they have to pay for ads, when the likelihood they will find a candidate is next to nothing?
This also only ever goes in one direction. A friend of mine works for a company run by and employs 100% women.
In any other context, it would be illegal. Instead, it's considered 'diverse' and 'empowering'.
Based on statistics alone, it's obvious the company is hiring women based on choice.
Tech companies, like Duo, touted the fact that they had all women development teams a few years back. When discrimination like this is an accepted practice, I stop listening.
Maybe Tech companies like Duo are just running gendered job ads, and that's why men aren't applying - they never see the ads. By your logic, that would be totally acceptable, right?
Are you saying the harm from gender-based employment discrimination needs to be demonstrated, or that harm from facebook's permitting of that discrimination needs to be demonstrated?
The job was posted was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'
But it was posted, and apparently that's what matters. So the ads that signpost you to the posting that only [people with special glasses] can see are just peachy.