Re: Betokened
"The issue that the author is highlighting is presumably that the imbalance in gender at Amazon is due to tacit discrimination on the part of hirers."
Of course. I suppose that means that the American NBA and NFL are racist, too, for being mostly black? I mean, if talent, aptitude, interest, and ability in all pursuits are truly randomly distributed across the population, without regard to sex, gender, race, socioeconomic status, etc., then why should a sports league be allowed to be so blatantly biased in favor of one race?
Of course, the idea that talent, aptitude, interest, and ability in all pursuits is randomly distributed across the population is bunk, and everyone knows this is so. Still, it's the key premise in assuming that any organization or profession that doesn't accurately represent some kind of demographic chart is engaging in discriminatory hiring practices.
I'd also wonder which demographic table a company should be using when designing hiring quotas (without calling it that, of course). Is it the demographic from the country in which the company is primarily located? That might not work in a place like the EU, where hiring and recruiting beyond a nation-state's borders is the norm. On the other hand, in a country as large as the US, are the national demographic figures really relevant to a company located in Silicon Valley, at the far west end of a continent-spanning country?
Is it the demographics of the specific city in which the company is located that matters? Or perhaps the way to do it is to draw a circle around the company of a given radius, and all people living within that circle will form the new demographic?
If we use that or the "city" method, a company could fix its "diversity problem" by moving to a city that already has the demographics necessary to balance its existing workforce. That can't be what anyone intended!
One wonders what the crusaders of righteousness will be doing not only about the underrepresentaion of whites in the NBA and NFL as mentioned above, but also about the underrepresentation of males on American college campuses, or the underrepresentation of straight males in professions like airline flight attendants. Or does "diversity" only count when it favors certain identity groups, but not others?
It's not really diversity then, is it? No one seems to be worried that the NBA is not very diverse at all, being nearly totally black, and that it doesn't represent the demographics of the nation or of most of the cities that are fielding mostly-black basketball teams, or any other apparent means of tabulating how many of this race and how many of that race we should have.
If they accept that sports teams just want to win and that they would take a basketball-playing martian if he was any good, and note that while this has resulted in a non-diverse league, it doesn't imply that there's anything unsavory going on, why can't they accept that the same dynamic exists in areas where their favored "victim" groups appear to be underrepresented as well?
Of course, I know the answer... it's because it's not supposed to be fair. It's supposed to bring power to the accusers, and it does, every time someone cowers and promises to do better. You can't win, so the best bet is to simply ignore the criticisms.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
