Former SAP leader's lawsuit claims she was canned for pushing corporate diversity A former office leader for SAP in Southeast Asia has accused the German software company of violating local laws by treating her differently from male counterparts during a corporate restructure and leaving her jobless. According to BJ Burlingame, former head of SAP's Asia Pacific and Japan business transformation unit, the …
"what happens when we get to 51% women, 49% men?"
A simple algorithm can be used to predict the respons in these circumstances:
Is the profession/occupation a desireable/prestigous one?
Yes - Are a majority women?
Yes - Celebrate womens achievement and push for yet more women. Discourage men.
No - Complain it is sexist and demaning for women. Special measure to encourage women.
No - Are a majority Women?
Yes - Complain it is sexist and demaning for women. Campaign for increased wages.
No - Do Nothing
We split off the female-heavy HR/reception/admin services to a sub-contractor.
That also has the advantage of reducing inequality between men-women average pay
Redistributing human resources along another axis is a pretty simple optimisation process. Assuming you don't care about the resources.
Then the targets shift to include the other 11 possible gender identities.
I suspect that in this particular case 3 months into the pandemic "going out of business" was a bigger concern than corporate diversity.
yeah there's always some fucking emergency that requires you to exclude any female candidates. i know we make you uncomfortable.
i am so tired of having the same qualifications and yet the boys see your feminine sounding name on the cv and you don't get a look-in... sometimes the only way to even get something approaching a fair shot is to fucking force them to look at your CV as well becasue of "dviersoty"! They don't even recognise their own unconsicous biases. They're not looking to see your qualifications. They're already angry they were made to read your CV,
Then they begrudgingly interview you and complain to their mates you were a diversity candidate.
the truth is a lot of us are just as good, can get better with training, but you just don't wnat us there.
just admit it.
This shit makes me so tired.
> yeah there's always some fucking emergency that requires you to exclude any female candidates.
It is my understanding that if a company has a policy in place that there must be a certain percentage of qualified female candidates in the pool of candidates before it can move ahead with the recruitment process, then the hiring process may end up lasting, say, three times longer than without such policy. Why? Perhaps there are simply fewer qualified female candidates in the world?
So if a company really really really needs to hire a new candidate as fast as possible, perhaps it is not possible to maintain a strict hiring policy where it has to wait for a certain number of female candidates to apply. I don't think it is fair to label this as "excluding female candidates". Do you?
This post has been deleted by its author
Having been rejected from consideration because I'm NOT a diversity candidate (hiring manager explicitly said so), I can personally vouch that this goes both ways.
Seems like the ideal way to do it would be to present the CVs without names or any other data that hints at gender, ethnicity, etc. That way the first cut, at least, would be purely based on qualifications.
I still remember that meeting where it was announced that the organisation had decided to achieve gender equality. Me and my (male) colleagues looked at each other and knew what that meant. I later had a face to face meeting where I was told in straight terms that since I was white, male and from the nordics I did not really have much of a future in the organisation because they were looking for people with a different demographic. So there is that. I fully support the goal of achieving gender equality (and diversity) but maybe we can begin to appreciate the nuances of what happens in the process of achieving this?
Why should 50% of jobs be filled by the opposite sex ?
Should 50% of Midwifes be Men ? Nothing to stop them.
Should 50% of Bricklayers be women ? Nothing to stop them.
Should 50% of El Reg be women ? Nothing to stop them.
Should 50% of Gynecologists be men ? Nothing to stop them.
Should 50% of Firefighters be women ? Nothing to stop them.
Not all jobs can be done by equal amounts of men and women. Why is that so hard of for the Wokerati to understand..
Women and Men have different qualities and thank Deity that they do, it's what makes our lifes interesting.
That's the whole problem, anon. There is usually something stopping them. Assumptions, biases, etc.
That's why it's called equal opportunity. People should be given equal chances to succeed. If you suck at cooking, or coding, or bricklaying, you shouldn't get the job. But it shouldn't be assumed you can't cook, code, or build. If you have an industry that actively or passively puts up barriers to entry for certain people, that's a problem.
C.
That'll explain all the female sewage workers, refuse collectors and HGV drivers. No barriers to entry, and very high demand for HGV drivers right now.
There is indeed something stopping them: Their own choices and preferences.
It's a bit like highlighting the world population demographics. Ok, great, roughly half the population is each of one of two genders. Now count how many trained nurses, how many trained teachers and how many trained computer programmers there are in each gender.
Yet only one of those is perceived to be a problem. Have you seen all the schemes, funding, adverts and biased recruiting that's been endemic for years to try and recruit women into IT? It's not barriers to entry,
only one of those is perceived to be a problem
Untrue. The lack of men in teaching (particularly primary), nursing and care is widely perceived as a problem and there are programmes in place to try to address it.
You just don't hear about them because, for some unaccountable reason, attempts to recruit more men don't trigger their bretheren to foam at the mouth.
Do a Google search for 'stem scholarships uk'.
Do a Google search for 'teaching scholarships uk'
Do a Google search for 'nursing scholarships uk'
Spotting the difference?
Now find me a teaching or nursing male equivalent to what you get for searching for (with the quotes) "in tech uk"
Do Education Authorities and NHS CCGs put diversity metrics in their senior manager objectives, so that addressing gender imbalances is required for their bonus and success in their roles, whether the candidates are available or not? It's happening wholescale across technology companies. Are job adverts carefully worded to avoid scaring off men, in the same way that tech recruiters avoid words like 'assertive' and 'competitive'? Are there male nursing and teaching networks, to help men gain skills and succeed despite being a gender minority?
I'm sure you can highlight these things, and that it's only because I'm not working in those industries that I don't see them. I'm sure it's purely fluke that of the 32 people working at my local GP surgery just three are male. I'm also sure that it's entirely coincidence that there isn't a single male teacher in any of my village's four schools. How sheltered a life I lead.
but but but what about...
It doesn't matter. Go complain to The Register equivalent in teaching or nursing if you think there's a problem there.
We're here to raise the bar in IT and engineering, not taking a look at another industry and thinking, "well if they're dropping the ball, I guess we should as well."
Weird.
C.
Sadly I have clearly failed to adequately articulate my point.
There is no problem. The only problem is people pretending that there is a problem. There is tremendous industry support for women, far far above the support for gender minorities in any other profession, and has been for many years.
We can't force women to take jobs they don't want. We are damaging men by trying - through reduced recognition, reduced opportunities, lesser financial support, horrific bias in education. I do not support that.
> There is usually something stopping them. Assumptions, biases, etc.
That is, in itself, a massive assumption. Biology skews various attributes, both physical and mental. That's why certain magazines at the supermarket checkout are rarely read by men and many magazines in newsagents are rarely read by women. Men and women have different preferences.
>That's why it's called equal opportunity.
"Equal opportunity" isn't what DIE programs promote. DIE programs promote equal outcomes.
If she was pushing "diversity" she wasn't pushing "excellence" because excellence doesn't care about diversity.
I doubt any of the problems SAP needs to solve are solved by particular genitals, skin colour or sexual preferences, so there is no reason include those attributes in any metrics. Good on SAP for squashing irrelevancy.
SAP is an intellectual property company. High IQ is how they solve problems and high IQ skews towards men at the top end of the spectrum. Engineering seems to attract more men than women lower down the spectrum too. The fact that women do dominate in some industries which used to be male-dominated (such as education) implies that where there is a preference, that shows up in the results, rather than the status quo being some dystopian misogynistic fantasy.
Do we need to point out that women typically take time off to manage a family and therefore tend to drop out of the "top corporate performers" contention? Do I need to explicitly say that children are far more important work than merely getting cash?
Calling out bias rather than preference or competence seems to demand some evidence before being accepted.
There are many things wrong about your comment.
1) You ignore the potential impact of culture. If you are socialized into reading "girlie" things you will. Women who do conform to that standard femininity are often punished for it.
2) In this day of modern equipment there less of a need of muscle mass in construction. But women heavy equipment operators don't seem to be common.
3) You make the assumption that diversity and excellence are at odds with each other. There is no evidence for it. This is a glaring bias.
4) Women forced to take time off is a failure of policy. Bias against people who take time off for family or health reasons is a social problem.
5) IQ tests tend to be biased to upper and upper middle class men as that is who conceived of the concepts in the test and wrote them.
6) Do I need to mention the wage gap? Women are clustered in helping professions which pay less. Meanwhile scams such as investment banking, which produces nothing, are higher paying and male dominated. Preparing the next generation or helping the sick is seen as lesser value.
Anecdote. When I started in the IT and Software at the Uni in the 80's our classes and the first few years after graduation the numbers were close to 50/50 male to female. Something happened to skew the numbers. It wasn't due to lack of ability.
Anecdote: a freind of mine was hired into a company to do GIS development. She had an MS, her name on a couple of papers, wrote several chapters in a text book, and quite frankly was the smartest person in the room. Eventually she was forced into field support and then quit due to being frozen out and given only grunt work to do. I doubt it was due to ability.
But there are problems with all of this.
I can say I have worked worked with and now for many excellent women in my profession (IT) and other professions, I currently work for female CIO who is one of the best IT executives I've every worked for.
BUT!
I have also worked around women who were elevated to their positions not due to skills but through these "diversity" programs and they are disasters! They obviously do not possess the skills or drive to perform the jobs they are given, and do not seem to have the desire to acquire those skills. When they are put into management positions they are terrible managers. They exhibit some of the worst traits for a manager. Favoritism, vindictiveness, an unwillingness to take responsibility for their own decisions and in some cases flat out lying! It also seems that senior management gets stuck between a rock and a hard place by the decision to promote them because if they do something about them they are accused of sexism.
People should be evaluated for their skills, knowledge and suitability for the job, race, sex or whatever preferences they have in their personal life should not be a factor! It is the people around and under these people who are artificially elevated that have to suffer through them.
I don't see the barriers you mention when I look at two of the most intelligent, powerful and respected leaders in the Europe who are women, Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde. Both of whom are the highest rung of what you might call male industries, Politics and Finance. How much more powerful can you get..
More examples : Francoise Bettencourt, Gina Rineheart, Margret Thatcher, Opera Winfrey etc Why didn't the barriers stop these women..
I would make a bet that none of these women considered themselves as victims of the system; I imagine that they had goals, took steps forward, sweated, cried and pounded their way to the top. Just like all the other people at the top.. It's not given to you, it's achieved...
Reorganizations and Reductions In Force are the easiest ways to get rid of problem employees like those who are too female, too black, too old, too LGBT, etc.They can also be used to get rid of poor performers and those who create an uncomfortable work environment.
I don't what motivated SAP but I find it highly suspect that they couldn't find another position for her but they could for her male peers.
Also their statistical defense smack's of "Some of my best friends are X".
Maybe the truth of this is, "She was starting to become a pain in the arse!"
You can run around the company your being paid to work for complaining about "diversity" as opposed to doing the job you being "paid" for and you just might find yourself out the door replaced by someone who will actually focus on the job their being paid for!
Maybe the problem was not that she was a woman, maybe she was just a "problem woman"!
You are both right.
Re AC -Reorgs and RIFs may make it easy but the consequences may come back to bite you.
Cliff - I agree that the most likely scenario is that she created an uncomfortable work environment.
Note that my comment on statistics was not meant to apply to this particular case, necessarily, but to all statistical arguments of that sort.
...we could select which gender takes time off their career path to produce offspring, often not returning to their chosen fields.
(Yeah, sure, there are exceptions. But let's face it, one gender tends to be more orientated toward producing & raising off-spring, while the other gender is more orientated toward providing for them. It is not right, it is not wrong, it is just they way we are.)
We had one woman, nice lady, in our London office who had a child, she took the very generous, government mandated (i think) 18 months maternity leave. She then returned to work and was pregnant 8 months later! Then took maternity leave again!
I'm not saying she did anything wrong but the expense to the company and the fact that people had to cover her responsibilities because it isn't like we could hire someone to do her job makes it obviously difficult to consider elevating her to a higher position.
Checking out her LinkedIn, she was in post for around 8 months before the department was closed.
Without having any clue what she personally does and if she was competent, I imagine that 6 months into the COVID panic, I could imagine that major transformation projects and corporate mergers probably were not on their customers shopping list.
Digging a little deeper, it would appear that the CFO, head of HR and Managing Director of the company that fired her - they were all women.
I love how her department was shutdown, there was a COVID crisis literally erupting around them, but it was clearly a gender issue that led to her termination.
We can go around all the usual stereotypes and get ourselves in trouble with the HR police, but it seems absurd to ask engineering and IT teams to be 50% female, when there is only a ~ 20% female ratio taking IT degrees. By all means encourage women into the sector etc.
I can't speak to this specific situation, but I can tell you that SAP has significant policies in place to promote diversity in the workplace. It is embedded into the culture of the business and that will make this lawsuit very difficult to win.
Why? Because discovery will show these detailed policies, including many meetings discussing this topic, and the reasons why specific candidates were chosen.
This comment sounds like an insider from SAP. How did this person know "many meetings discussing this topic" were done? Every company has "significant policies" in place. The part about how this was considered as a valid case in Singapore's high court instead of just being dismissed outright warrants how those "significant policies" were implemented.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
