Teacher explains equity, tells students why they can't be treated equally

[RDKirk]

MSN

This elementary school teacher uses a simple lesson to answer her students' questions about why those in the class with disabilities get special treatment to help them overcome their disabilities in the classroom.

Then she (or the article editors) make the huge leap to why society must use "equity" to address social inequities such as in wages.

What she's calling "equity" is what society has always done, to some greater or lesser extent, to greater or lesser effect, with greater or lesser sensitivity, to people with disabilities. At some point in the distant past, someone who broke his leg got recuperative treatment instead of being put out of the camp.

I remember in basic training that guys who were overweight were also given special treatment...they were made to do more running. Guys who were having trouble following directions were given a lot more directions to follow...for more practice. Basic Training provided different treatment to trainees to obtain an immediate equal result: Everyone's graduation from Basic Training.

None of this equates to "There aren't as many women engineers in the company as male engineers, so we must higher every woman engineer that applies until the numbers are equal."

 

[Pythagon]

"There aren't as many women engineers in the company as male engineers, so we must higher every woman engineer that applies until the numbers are equal."

Why do people do this? Looks like a way of promoting incompetence

 

[Pommer]

"There aren't as many women engineers in the company as male engineers, so we must higher every woman engineer that applies until the numbers are equal."

Why do people do this? Looks like a way of promoting incompetence

You surely didn’t mean to imply that by hiring more women companies would lower the overall quality of their work?
Right?

 

[Pythagon]

You surely didn’t mean to imply that by hiring more women companies would lower the overall quality of their work?
Right?

Not 'would' but potentially 'could'. People should be hired based on merit and skill.

Moreover, it wouldn't be just to deny a tell a qualified male candidate that he can't be hired because he's in the wrong sex. Which is what happens anytime we deny someone a job opportunity based on gender.

I think we should aim for fairness here

 

[Pommer]

Not 'would' but potentially 'could'. People should be hired based on merit and skill.

Companies are filled with people whose jobs are to vet potential employees and sometimes they get it correct. If the person’s sex “doesn’t matter” then why are we discussing this?

Moreover, it wouldn't be just to deny a tell a qualified male candidate that he can't be hired because he's in the wrong sex.

Some might refer to this as “karma”, since it has happened in nearly every male-dominated workforce when a woman had the audacity to “do a man’s job”.

Which is what happens anytime we deny someone a job opportunity based on gender.

How do we change things if we don’t change things?

I think we should aim for fairness here

How is selecting the best candidate for a job opening based on qualifications (not by sex) going to be “unfair to men”?

 

[RDKirk]

You surely didn’t mean to imply that by hiring more women companies would lower the overall quality of their work?
Right?

Hiring to fill a quota when the supply is unequal almost certainly would.

Let's say there are slots for 10 new engineers. The company's DEI unit tells them that they must hire five men and five women.

Given the gender ratio of engineers available, fifty men apply and five women apply. So, the company is able to be very selective of the male candidates and hire the top five meritorious men out of the fifty. But they're unable to be selective of the women...they have to hire all the women who apply, regardless of their merit compared to the 50 male candidates.

 

[RDKirk]

How is selecting the best candidate for a job opening based on qualifications (not by sex) going to be “unfair to men”?

But they did go by sex. DEI demands it.

 

[Pommer]

Hiring to fill a quota when the supply is unequal almost certainly would.

Let's say there are slots for 10 new engineers. The company's DEI unit tells them that they must hire five men and five women.

Given the gender ratio of engineers available, 50 men apply and five women apply. So, the company is able to be very selective of the male candidates and hire the top five meritorious men out of the fifty. But they're unable to be selective of the women...they have to hire all the women who apply, regardless of their merit compared to the 50 male candidates.

This subtly assumes the female engineers are inherently less able.
Where has it been established that companies are hiring women to “fill quotas”?

 

[RDKirk]

This subtly assumes the female engineers are inherently less able.
Where has it been established that companies are hiring women to “fill quotas”?

It assumes that female engineers, like male engineers, span the gamut of capability, and if you hire every female engineer that applies in order to fill the quota, you're going to get some of them that are less capable.

 

[Tinker Grey]

It assumes that female engineers, like male engineers, span the gamut of capability, and if you hire every female engineer that applies in order to fill the quota, you're going to get some of them that are less capable.

That's why you read the resume: to fill the quota with the qualified women.

 

[Derf]

This subtly assumes the female engineers are inherently less able.
Where has it been established that companies are hiring women to “fill quotas”?

I'm subtly assuming you can't comprehend what you read. He wrote:

Given the gender ratio of engineers available, fifty men apply and five women apply.

Just based on application ratios, one woman will only be hired for every 10 men.

 

[keith99]

That's why you read the resume: to fill the quota with the qualified women.

If the quota is 5 and you only have 5 applications from women, picking the top 5 means picking every woman who applied.

And trying to attract applications from women would lead to very limited success in engineering. After first year I do not recall any women in my physics classes. First year there were a few, usually chemistry majors crossing over a bit.

Interestingly having a quota like this probably would work in chemistry. It would be closer to 50 men and 25 women to start, with 15 more who at least had the education who could be attracted to at least apply.

In engineering the 5 to 50 split is optimistic.

 

[dzheremi]

I am in a field that is actually female-dominated (education), and I feel like they are still very selective about the men they hire. Had I not already done what I'm now doing at the a much higher level (I was an assistant to one of the professors in my department while I was a grad student), I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that they would've passed me over. Do DEI initiatives ever cover this sort of situation? I don't know every company in the world, of course, or the full range of ways in which DEI initiatives may be implemented, but from the experience I had as recently as 2021 in the daily job search for 13 consecutive months (yeah...trying to find work as a disabled person really does suck, even if you are more highly educated than the average applicant), I'm inclined to believe that they probably don't.

I want every person who wants to work to be able to do so, but I don't think achieving parity via quotas is necessarily going to work in every situation. Maybe it doesn't matter what sex your average white-collar pencil-pusher is at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, but in the real world there are places you can technically work that are going to be in some sense set up to work against you being hired, and there is virtually nothing you can do about that. "Society in general would rather not have men in K-12 education because of the persistent -- sadly entirely understandable -- notion that any man who would work with children is to be looked at with suspicion of being a pedo" is not really the basis for any sort of lawsuit or social reordering of society, you know? Nobody wants to be the one to tell society that they're being a bunch of Helen Lovejoys, because some things you can't force through the zeitgeist by the pure force of believed-in unreality, while other things you can.

 

[Chesterton]

This elementary school teacher uses a simple lesson to answer her students' questions about why those in the class with disabilities get special treatment to help them overcome their disabilities in the classroom.

For some reason I can't read the article but it sounds like the takeaway is that being female is a disability. I've been saying that all my life and I get called a Sexist.

 

[Tinker Grey]

If the quota is 5 and you only have 5 applications from women, picking the top 5 means picking every woman who applied.

And trying to attract applications from women would lead to very limited success in engineering. After first year I do not recall any women in my physics classes. First year there were a few, usually chemistry majors crossing over a bit.

Interestingly having a quota like this probably would work in chemistry. It would be closer to 50 men and 25 women to start, with 15 more who at least had the education who could be attracted to at least apply.

In engineering the 5 to 50 split is optimistic.

I don't know how HR does things, but I think there is a rational approach.

I can't imagine (as an engineer myself) that HR would implement a quota the way most worrywarts think. Just because 5 females applied with merely an HS education doesn't mean they must or should be hired. But whether HR thinks like this or not, I think there is a rational approach:

Things to remember/consider:

• Just because there is a quota doesn't mean it must met on the first hiring go around.
• If you must have 5 engineers now and there are 5 qualified male applicants (with X number unqualified) and 2 qualified female (with Y number unqualified), hire 3 qualified males and 2 qualified females.
• Balancing the work force may take multiple hiring iterations. (Restatement of above).

The "problems" of quotas are because people imagine that they must hire 5 unqualified people if they have the characteristics that fill the quota. I should hope no one in charge of hiring thinks that way.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

The "problems" of quotas are because people imagine that they must hire 5 unqualified people if they have the characteristics that fill the quota. I should hope no one in charge of hiring thinks that way.

I agree that companies aren't hiring unqualified people, but the problem with any kind of quota is that at some point you have to make a choice that you normally wouldn't make. Otherwise the quota is pointless.

Some might refer to this as “karma”, since it has happened in nearly every male-dominated workforce when a woman had the audacity to “do a man’s job”.

The problem is that the people who DID discriminate already have their positions, and so the "karma" ends up impacting the next generation of candidates who had nothing to do with those decisions.

How is selecting the best candidate for a job opening based on qualifications (not by sex) going to be “unfair to men”?

It wouldn't be, but again, that's pure merit-based hiring. No quotas required.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't know how HR does things, but I think there is a rational approach.

I can't imagine (as an engineer myself) that HR would implement a quota the way most worrywarts think. Just because 5 females applied with merely an HS education doesn't mean they must or should be hired. But whether HR thinks like this or not, I think there is a rational approach:

Things to remember/consider:

• Just because there is a quota doesn't mean it must met on the first hiring go around.
• If you must have 5 engineers now and there are 5 qualified male applicants (with X number unqualified) and 2 qualified female (with Y number unqualified), hire 3 qualified males and 2 qualified females.
• Balancing the work force may take multiple hiring iterations. (Restatement of above).

The "problems" of quotas are because people imagine that they must hire 5 unqualified people if they have the characteristics that fill the quota. I should hope no one in charge of hiring thinks that way.

They aren't "unqualified." They're graduates of engineering schools. They're just not the "most qualified." Part of the problem is that being "more qualified" isn't easily quantifiable in terms that DEI cares about.

And I'm discovering to my chagrin (apparently I've been sleeping) that DEI doesn't work like HR of the past. With HR, it was a matter of meeting the requirements of federal and state laws. That's the process you described.

With DEI, it's a matter of gaining sufficient positive "vibes" that a company is doing everything it can to achieve equity. Companies get equity scores from a couple of different DEI scoring agencies that commercial banks are using to determine whether they'll extend financing. This is a whole new thing.

 

[Ana the Ist]

MSN

This elementary school teacher uses a simple lesson to answer her students' questions about why those in the class with disabilities get special treatment to help them overcome their disabilities in the classroom.

Right.

Then she (or the article editors) make the huge leap to why society must use "equity" to address social inequities such as in wages.

It looks like the author or editor but yeah.

What she's calling "equity" is what society has always done, to some greater or lesser extent, to greater or lesser effect, with greater or lesser sensitivity, to people with disabilities. At some point in the distant past, someone who broke his leg got recuperative treatment instead of being put out of the camp.

I remember in basic training that guys who were overweight were also given special treatment...they were made to do more running. Guys who were having trouble following directions were given a lot more directions to follow...for more practice. Basic Training provided different treatment to trainees to obtain an immediate equal result: Everyone's graduation from Basic Training.

Indeed, sadly today's teachers are taking the approach of "if you aren't good at math, the solution isn't more practice at math but to blame math and not force you to learn it."

None of this equates to "There aren't as many women engineers in the company as male engineers, so we must higher every woman engineer that applies until the numbers are equal."

Nope. I saw recently that California has initiated a "ebony" alert....an alert system that is designed to be for black women and children up to age 24....like the Amber alert is for children of any race up to age 17.

I'm also glad to see the reaction from the black community wasn't exactly positive....as many pointed out how odd it seemed to focus on the race of the child instead of just the fact it's a missing child.

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's why you read the resume: to fill the quota with the qualified women.

Why is there a quota to begin with?

It either matters that someone is a woman, or it doesn't. If it doesn't matter....why the quota?

 

[FireDragon76]

MSN

This elementary school teacher uses a simple lesson to answer her students' questions about why those in the class with disabilities get special treatment to help them overcome their disabilities in the classroom.

Then she (or the article editors) make the huge leap to why society must use "equity" to address social inequities such as in wages.

What she's calling "equity" is what society has always done, to some greater or lesser extent, to greater or lesser effect, with greater or lesser sensitivity, to people with disabilities. At some point in the distant past, someone who broke his leg got recuperative treatment instead of being put out of the camp.

I remember in basic training that guys who were overweight were also given special treatment...they were made to do more running. Guys who were having trouble following directions were given a lot more directions to follow...for more practice. Basic Training provided different treatment to trainees to obtain an immediate equal result: Everyone's graduation from Basic Training.

None of this equates to "There aren't as many women engineers in the company as male engineers, so we must higher every woman engineer that applies until the numbers are equal."

Equity for people with disabilities means allowing people to participate meaningfully in society at all levels, that people aren't arbitrarily excluded just because they are disabled., even if that means some reasonable accommodations must be made for them.