[darkchasma]

I always see these arguments as very very myopic. If I need a developer, then I hire a developer. I am very much discriminating against accountants, because they don't fit the qualifications that I am looking for. But no intelligent person would ever frame it that way. If you're a 10 to 1 ratio, then you need to diversify, and you would discriminate against men the same way you discriminate against accountants. The enlightened individual realizes very quickly that diversity is the goal because it works better.

[borplk]

That's not how it works.

An accountant will not have the qualification to get the job done and that's why you are not considering them, it's not discrimination.

Discrimination is when you ignore someone or treat them differently based on an attribute that is seemingly non-relevant to what is required to get the job done.

Gender, race, religion is often one of those attributes.

There may be cases where one of the above attributes is so crucial to the job that it is not discriminatory to consider them. For example a church will not accept an 'atheist bishop' and in that case that is not discrimination.

But if you apply for a fastfood job and get rejected because you are an atheist, then that is discrimination.

In the case of the author, it would be wrong to treat female applicants differently or only look for females or ignore the male applicants. In my opinion the right approach would be to do the things that results in getting more female applicants so that there will be a higher chance of the best applicant to be a female.

[darkchasma]

The job the person is applying for is an engineer and workplace diversify-er. How does the white male accomplish the second criteria?

[tzs]

> If you're a 10 to 1 ratio, then you need to diversify, and you would discriminate against men the same way you discriminate against accountants. The enlightened individual realizes very quickly that diversity is the goal because it works better.

In a professional work environment, how does gender diversity work better? In over 30 years of programming, dealing with a wide range of types of code and many languages, I've yet to run into a situation where having female-written code would have made any difference.

I can see it making a difference in a non-professional environment where work and social life are heavily intertwined. That's why, for instance, it is important at schools where most students live at the school and the school is where most of their social activity occurs. Things get uncomfortable when you have 15-20% females in an environment where people are both colleagues and boyfriend/girlfriend candidates.

That was the situation at Caltech when I was there. Since then, they have balanced things more, and are now something like 40% female. They did this without discriminating. What they did was work hard on getting qualified females to apply. The actual admission process, though, was kept gender blind.

[TheCoelacanth]

It's not illegal to discriminate against accountants. It is illegal to discriminate against someone because of their gender.

[darkchasma]

No, it's not. When is the last time you went to a gentlemans club and saw a naked man on stage?

[TheCoelacanth]

It is allowable only in circumstances where it is a "bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise".

A gentlemans club can get away with it. Someone who simply wants to change their gender ratio can't.

Discriminating against accountants is legal in all circumstances.

[darkchasma]

I haven't seen the case law which prohibits hiring for diversity. Could you direct me to some which demonstrates your assertion?

[TheCoelacanth]

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discriminating based on sex except when it is a bona fide occupational qualification. Diversity is certainly not a bona fide occupational qualification, so they can't recruit based on it.

They may be justified in taking diversity into account in the hiring process, but they cannot exclude candidates based solely on sex. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, SCOTUS held that candidates can not be excluded exclusively because of race. In Grutter v. Bollinger, they decided that it was legal to take it into account, but only on an individual basis, not to exclude candidates altogether. These both deal with race, but I see no evidence that sex would be treated differently since the same law applies to both.

[darkchasma]

Civil Rights Act does not ban affirmative action. As long as its aiming to correct a statistical imbalance, which a 10-1 ratio is certainly is. (And a few more points, but nothing to conclude your assertion is certain)