And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.
Bad assumption. She's got an interesting story, but doesn't go anywhere interesting and seems to just blame it all on the vague idea of antique male chauvinism.
Among orchestral musicians, which is not the same field but at least similar to writing as part of 'the arts', blind auditions, in which a curtain conceals the identity (and gender etc.) of an aspiring performer from judges, have made a ~30% contribution to improvements in gender equity among job seekers. Rigorous paper: http://www.faculty.diversity.ucla.edu/search/searchtoolkit/d...
Statistics isolate a clearly defined class of irrelevant biases. An excellent, targeted solution is implemented to address that specific problem, and doesn't waste any time blaming people for subconscious biases.
Saying "sexism" has with it the connotation that there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. That it's a product of backwards thinking and known prejudices.
What you are seeing here though is much more than that. We're seeing that people conform to a pre-ordained bias. In this case, that all good writers are upper-crust white guys with distinguished names. This is a much deeper and subconscious display of human behaviour that all of us are bound to.
It is unlikely that all of this woman's readers feel women should be barefoot in the kitchen.
> there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society
Women not being rewarded equally for equal work is a fundamental wrong which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. It's possible I'm misreading you but one can be sexist without being a cave, um, person.
She was free to pick a male sounding name. Problem solved. Also, it is just her story, it is not clear if she did "equal work" with her female name. She picked the name for something she did not want to be associated with - perhaps it simply was a different kind of writing that tends to pay better?
Well, I'll start by saying that I'm assuming the story is accurate, there's no point discussing it otherwise. She specifically mentions that she applied for identical jobs as both personas.
What if she had to meet a client face-to-face? Or even by phone?
Well I wouldn't assume the story is accurate - obviously she wants to make a good story. So applying for "identical jobs" might have some poetic freedom in it.
In any case, if she went to see the client face-to-face or by phone, all sorts of other things might have happened. She might have fared better on average than a man. There is no way to tell from her story.
It really is just a story, all sorts of other parameters could have affected the outcome. What sort of thing is she writing? Some subjects might be more readily associated with men, other with women.
The choice of names could have an effect in all sorts of ways, not only by signaling a gender.
Really, there is no substance here at all, I am sorry. If people want to get worked up about that story, it is because they want to get worked up about it, not because there is real substance.
For a better experiment, take the one with randomized CVs with randomized names, where black sounding names fared a lot worse than white sounding names. That is a proper experiment, because all other things besides the names were equal. This story here is not science. She herself is drawing a conclusion from her experience, but her subjective explanation doesn't really explain anything.
She could also be a pathological liar, secretly a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man or the Emir of Groovefunkistan. Once we start discounting the facts presented as fact by a principal in the article we might as well just switch to floral teapots in low earth orbit.
This story doesn't pretend to be science, why are we comparing it to randomized double-blind studies?
Why ask for science: because the story author and among others I think also you have started drawing conclusions from it ("society is still sexist", "women get paid less for equal work"). Where is the point in erecting this building of accusations if the foundations aren't sound? Unless it is just politics, which is OT on HN.
Speaking personally I don't think either of those conclusions can be drawn from this article, but nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad generalizations.
I would love to see more and better science on the topic but I think there is still value in anecdotes and the discussions they result in.
"nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad generalizations."
I do think they are controversial, as the statistics are usually very shallow. Apart from the "dumb" statistics (basically "on average, men earn more than women"), there are also lots of papers on how certain laws that are supposed to be helping women actually have the opposite effect, and other causes for the difference.
The "uncontroversial" bit is exactly what is standing in the way of finding a solution.
Anecdotes are OK, but don't generalize from them, please.
>Women not being rewarded equally for equal work is a fundamental wrong
Unless you're proposing communism in the absolute, I'm not sure how you can enforce what an audience (including many women) likes or doesn't like. The fact that what they think they like or not is in some way based on unconscious arguments to authority is not something you can legislate.
Have you considered that it doesn't matter how honest the discussion is if we don't share the same assumptions. What if the real problem isn't the problem you see?
There is no obvious reason why a woman would be paid less for the same work, for example a rule saying "pay a woman $5 less than a man", or even an actual conspiracy that may be slightly less obvious but is still a clear problem. So therefore, "women getting paid less than man for the same work" is not really a description of the problem, it's just a symptom.
Yet it still happens. Before we can fix it, we need to know why, otherwise there's a good chance we'll be creating more problems.
I agree and I have explicitly not attempted to state a root cause (other than the tautological 'men and women are treated differently' of course) nor any suggested fixes.
I do not, however, agree that honest discussion can't benefit. Most of the problems I see in online conversations regarding sexism/gender/etc involve nearly everyone involved no matter their position flying straight through the actual words on screen into some higher dimension of rape culture vs the PC feminazis. It's insane, frustrating in the extreme and entirely counterproductive. There's a lot of baggage held by everyone and I think realizing that people can disagree and still converse on the subject would be an excellent first step both towards discerning a root cause and effecting a change.
That's behind my call for an honest discussion and I thank you wholeheartedly for participating.
involve nearly everyone involved no matter their position flying straight through the actual words on screen into some higher dimension...
Yes, I am frustrated by the same thing. That is exactly why I was disappointed by the article, because the comments about activism and 19th century stigmas lead directly down that path.
That was a fairly minor point in the article to me. I believe the concrete facts of the experience are far more valuable than the few lines devoted to an, as you say, simplistic description of the broader problem.
Maybe her name was just crap, and a cool female name would have worked as well. Also she said her male personae blog was limping along until it was listed somewhere as one of the top ten blogs to read. Who says it couldn't have happened with a female name?
I'm saying that labeling it sexism isn't a useful conclusion at this point. Saying as much basically ends the investigation with no solution, in favor of a broad and arbitrary feminist agenda that may do little to actually address her specific problem.
There are an infinite number of poor conclusions that can be drawn logically from that bad assumption. I only picked the most likely response for a typical reader[1]. Whether it's a broad feminist agenda is mostly beside the point.
The point is that the discussion cannot stop with the sexism label. It's impossible to make progress when you conclude by blaming vague 19th century ideas about gender. There's nowhere to go from there. That's my problem with the article.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. You assert that the discussion is immediately over once the word 'sexism' is mentioned, with no proof to back up this assertion.
Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
> You assert that the discussion is immediately over once the word 'sexism' is mentioned, with no proof to back up this assertion.
Once people agree that sexism is the problem, useful discussion ends. You can still argue about whether it's sexism, or you can argue about solutions for solving sexism (see: Gender Studies). Neither one of those are likely to help you discover the real reasons why this particular woman found so much more success with a male pseudonym.
As for proof-- see most of this thread. Rather than discussing solutions or looking for explanations, it's mostly attempts to challenge the assumption I quoted.
> Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
The article itself doesn't actually use the word. neilk used it as a fairly accurate summation of what was implied by the article.
She suggests that activism is the answer (and goes on to say she doesn't have the time for it). Activism against what? Apparently, according to the article, 19th century stigmas, which are defined circularly as whatever made people not hire her until she chose a male name.
I'm simply doing what most of the posters here did subconsciously and am challenging the assertion that "sexism is the problem," not because it's wrong, but because it's not meaningful.
Your points about the vagaries of activism and its targets are valid and I agree. However, you're still asserting that an entire line of conversation is impossible or without meaning due to the presence of, as far as I can tell, a single word.
I'd very much like to continue this thread but I'd ask you to please elaborate on your position or support it in some way or we'll descend into "does not!" "does too!" rather rapidly. Alternatively we can attempt to frame the discussion in another way that you find meaningful.
> Your points about the vagaries of activism and its targets are valid and I agree. However, you're still asserting that an entire line of conversation is impossible or without meaning due to the presence of, as far as I can tell, a single word.
Accepting generic sexism as the problem to solve is what ends useful discussion. It doesn't matter what specific words are used. James didn't use that word at all in the section I identified, but the point remains the same.
And to be more precise, when I say "end useful discussion" mean that until the bad assumption is retracted, progress towards real understanding and, consequently, good solutions, will be difficult.
Incidentally, the main point of the original article was to out the author as a woman. But the complaints about sexism are fairly obvious. My criticism was restricted to that and not intended to completely invalidate the entire post.
And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.
Bad assumption. She's got an interesting story, but doesn't go anywhere interesting and seems to just blame it all on the vague idea of antique male chauvinism.