> Using screens to hide the identity of auditioning musicians increased women's probability of advancing from preliminary orchestra auditions by fifty percent.
I thought that the increase was largely attributed to more women being willing to audition anonymously?
> if that describes you, and you have serious Linux, Ruby, and JavaScript chops, perhaps you should email me
I don't know why, but I always thought the Atwood was 100% invested in Microsoft technologies. Not that it matters, it just surprised me.
Speaking of Atwood, has anybody ever used one of his keyboards? Any opinions?
She was able to attribute 25% of the increase in hiring of women by orchestras was due to the blind auditions. She also found that there was an explosion of auditions when orchestras adopted the blind format.
So it had an effect, just not as large as I thought.
That's weird. From what I've seen of women in classical orchestras, if I were the one in charge of auditioning and hiring musicians (not blind), I'd probably be hiring mostly women....
Honestly, if you're a straight guy, why wouldn't you want pretty young women working with you?
Hey, I'm just pointing out that this common trope about men discriminating against women for jobs doesn't really make that much sense, unless all the men in charge of hiring are gay (which obviously isn't the case or the claim).
Seriously, what kind of straight man only wants to be around men all day long, and then (assuming he's married) come home every day to the same woman, and never get to socialize with any other women? Maybe a religious fundamentalist, but not any normal man.
1. Why should women be judged on attractiveness? Men are not generally judged on this standard to join orchestras or do office work. It also, perversely, punishes women for being experienced while men benefit from it, handicapping their lifetime earning power. Professional women probably do not want to spend their lives judged as eye candy.
2. Because of the first point you will still end up with a strong male bias on top of whatever natural one training creates; after all, we're looking at men of any age versus young women, for the most part, in this scenario.
3. The numbers clearly do not bear out the assertion you're making in the first place, since blind auditions significantly increase the likelihood of women being hired after auditioning. It seems your "self-evident" reasoning does not fit the facts.
4. I do not think it is true that all men want to spend more time socializing with women. I don't see how the logic you're positing works unless sexual harassment is just outright permitted. If you're not convinced that sexual harassment is bad then I guess you're operating on a different plane than most of us.
Thanks for the response, but I really don't understand where you're getting the idea that I'm advocating sexual harassment at all.
I'll go backwards:
4. So you think that most men would prefer to not have any women around them most of the time, and only want to socialize with other men? I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly isn't the case with me. I don't really want to work in a monastery-like atmosphere devoid of females (attractive or not).
3. Maybe, but that's what I'm asking about: why would straight men only want to be around other men? Seriously, I really don't understand this at all. Are most men repressed gays or something? I actually like being in mixed environments, even if I'm not attracted to most or even any of the women. Am I weird that way?
1-2. You seem to be claiming that men aren't also judged on attractiveness, and this seems wrong. I'm quite sure a lot of studies have shown that men are indeed judged on attractiveness, though the standard is somewhat different than for men (it doesn't disfavor older men as much). Just go find a short guy (or worse, a short fat guy) and ask him how his life is going and if he perceives any discrimination.
Anyway, my point all along has not been that only young pretty women should be hired, as you seem to think, my point was that I don't understand why men would discriminate against women in hiring, because to do so would mean you're surrounding yourself with a bunch of dudes, and as I said above, I don't know about other men, but I for one do not enjoy "sausagefests"; I like mixed environments.
I've heard enough men vocalize such thoughts to think that a fair number of them do.
The reason I get the idea that you're advocating sexual harassment is that you keep casting this in sexual terms -- why would you want to be surrounded by men, unless you're gay? Work is not a sexual environment (let's ignore the exceptions for this conversation); why is sexual orientation relevant? Saying "hey, aren't you heterosexual? Then why don't you hire women?" manages to promote a progressive cause with regressive reasoning.
I will concede that men, too, are judged by appearance, but I think that the standard is far more lenient and, as you said, tolerant of age.
In any event, the auditions are meant to judge skill. The conclusion I reach from the success of blind auditions is that evaluators perceive playing as less skillful when they know it is done by a woman.
>The reason I get the idea that you're advocating sexual harassment is that you keep casting this in sexual terms -- why would you want to be surrounded by men, unless you're gay? Work is not a sexual environment (let's ignore the exceptions for this conversation); why is sexual orientation relevant?
So you think that if I'm not actively looking for sex from women, that I should be perfectly happy to live a life completely devoid of any kind of female contact whatsoever?
That seems extremely disturbing to me.
Does that also mean that if I'm not actively looking to have a sex partner of a different race/ethnicity, then I should be perfectly happy to never have any kind of contact with people from other ethnic groups?
Wow, I guess on HN I'm just a real weirdo because I don't want to be surrounded by white males and be completely cut off from contact with other kinds of people.
No. I'm suggesting that arguing that you don't want to be surrounded exclusively by white males because "hey, I'm not gay" (implicitly, because you want to have sex with these people, or at least would not object to doing so) is somewhere between off-putting and troglodytic.
"From what I've seen of women in classical orchestras, if I were the one in charge of auditioning and hiring musicians (not blind), I'd probably be hiring mostly women.... Honestly, if you're a straight guy, why wouldn't you want pretty young women working with you?"
This is what you wrote. So, no, I think you're just trying to walk away from the implications of what you wrote because you are embarrassed. How do you propose interpreting that without any sexual bent?
You're taking one line I wrote and applying it to everything. I've made a bunch of other statements in this conversation about how I prefer mixed groups, not only of sex but of ethnicity too. One nice side-effect of a mixed group is there might be some dateable people in there, but it's not a given, and it's nice to have a mixed group (IMO) for many other reasons than just sex or seeing pretty faces, but I don't see how it's wrong to want to work in a mixed environment and have that possibility if you're single.
Playing devil's advocate, that strategy can still end up with a deficit of women. If your selection bias is (pretty ^ young) women > dudes > (unattractive v old) women, your hires are still going to be predominantly dudes, unless the talent pool is so deep there is always a qualified woman available who is also pretty and young .
You have a good point here, but just from what I've seen with symphonies, it seems like usually the performers, of both sexes, are fairly young(-ish). And they're usually all reasonably attractive. They're up on a stage for people to see them, after all, so naturally whoever's trying to keep ticket sales up is going to want them to look nice.
I thought that the increase was largely attributed to more women being willing to audition anonymously?
> if that describes you, and you have serious Linux, Ruby, and JavaScript chops, perhaps you should email me
I don't know why, but I always thought the Atwood was 100% invested in Microsoft technologies. Not that it matters, it just surprised me.
Speaking of Atwood, has anybody ever used one of his keyboards? Any opinions?