^^^ I struggle to see how OP is an economist. Constrained optimization can't be better than unconstrained optimization. If gender-blind search policy is not good enough, then I don't know what is. Quotas are demeaning to both sides.
Female AP here.
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OP here.
I'm curious whether you consider either of these anecdotes "quotas":
1) The university administration offers the department funding to fly out an additional candidate, who must be female.
2) The interview candidates are split between males and females. The flyout candidates are 100% female.There is a semantic can of worms. A poster earlier defined "quota" as any policy that considers gender. That seems like a broader definition of quota than most people use. That was my point.
He also used it to rebut my point that not all universities that consider gender when hiring are using quotas. I am not sure how to engage with the argument if terms are defined that way. My point was clear to anyone not playing semantic games.You didn't answer my question. Do you consider either of those anecdotes "quotas"?
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OP here.
I'm curious whether you consider either of these anecdotes "quotas":
1) The university administration offers the department funding to fly out an additional candidate, who must be female.
2) The interview candidates are split between males and females. The flyout candidates are 100% female.There is a semantic can of worms. A poster earlier defined "quota" as any policy that considers gender. That seems like a broader definition of quota than most people use. That was my point.
He also used it to rebut my point that not all universities that consider gender when hiring are using quotas. I am not sure how to engage with the argument if terms are defined that way. My point was clear to anyone not playing semantic games.You didn't answer my question. Do you consider either of those anecdotes "quotas"?
OP here. I did try to avoid the question consciously. The argument I keep trying to reiterate is that I am uncomfortable with the term "quota" being used universally to describe policies that are not really quotas. Because I think it is incendiary language.
There are occasions where schools have policies that could be described as quotas for interviews and/or flyouts. I am not trying to deny that or comment on the merits of it.
But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input.
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But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input.Thank you. I agree with you that (1) technically isn't a quota, but is really close to one. As for (2), just to be clear, if the interview candidates are split between males and females, but the flyout candidates are 100% male, would you also say that you are not sure what policy was in place?
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OP here.
I'm curious whether you consider either of these anecdotes "quotas":
1) The university administration offers the department funding to fly out an additional candidate, who must be female.
2) The interview candidates are split between males and females. The flyout candidates are 100% female.There is a semantic can of worms. A poster earlier defined "quota" as any policy that considers gender. That seems like a broader definition of quota than most people use. That was my point.
He also used it to rebut my point that not all universities that consider gender when hiring are using quotas. I am not sure how to engage with the argument if terms are defined that way. My point was clear to anyone not playing semantic games.You didn't answer my question. Do you consider either of those anecdotes "quotas"?
OP here. I did try to avoid the question consciously. The argument I keep trying to reiterate is that I am uncomfortable with the term "quota" being used universally to describe policies that are not really quotas. Because I think it is incendiary language.
There are occasions where schools have policies that could be described as quotas for interviews and/or flyouts. I am not trying to deny that or comment on the merits of it.
But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input.OP, I think you made some good observations. But as someone earlier opined, the views from both sides shouldn't be swept under the carpet. We have to openly bring them to the table and discuss the merits and demerits.
Meanwhile, how many years out of PhD are you? Top 5 PhD?
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good people on both sides here.
OP is right that there are not that many explicit quotas (though I ran into one personally, ouch).
and I see nothing wrong with outreach activities, encouraging URMs/females to apply, etc.
where things get murky is when provosts promise extra funding to fly out nonwhitemales (NWMs). I suppose you could argue that if you are just adding people to the pool it's not necessarily disadvantaging those would who have been brought in anyway...
what I worry more about are what I will call "informal quotas" - i.e., pressure from the president on down for the process to end up with fewer NWMs even if there are no explicit quotas. there is *tons* of such pressure at my university, and they are very careful about how they do it.
our university general counsel came by to tell us that
1/ we can't explicitly say that race or gender are a hiring criterion, but we can say that the university values a "diverse faculty"
2/ that said, we can't measure "diversity" by race & gender alone, or we'll get sued. she said be especially careful not to send emails saying that we are choosing for race/gender reasons.
3/ instead, require a "diversity statement" from each applicant and use that as part of the criteria. she was quick to point out that at 6'5" NOrdic bro (seriously, that was her example) could write an amazing diversity statement...though she acknowledged with a wry smile that most of the really-good diversity statement get written by NMWs.
4/ finally, the dean harangues us at every faculty meeting about how we are too white, too male, etc "and that has to change." but he is careful never to say explicitly that we should encourage race and gender in hiring as explicit criteria. see the loophole?and so that is how affirmative action is implemented without quotas: massive institutional pressure + diversity statements.
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But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input.Thank you. I agree with you that (1) technically isn't a quota, but is really close to one. As for (2), just to be clear, if the interview candidates are split between males and females, but the flyout candidates are 100% male, would you also say that you are not sure what policy was in place?
OP here.
Yes I would. At my institution, we have done several searches in the past 3-4 years. In all of them, we interviewed many male and many female candidates. In one of them, only males were flown out. In the others, at least one male and at least one female were flown out. The ratio varied considerably. It is just how things worked out. We did consciously try to make sure we were fully considering people of both genders. We did not have anything I would call a quota. I am sure that if our interview list was 20 men and 0 women (or vice versa) we would have questioned it and probably made changes, but that certainly didn't come close to happening.
So I am not willing to say that a particular flyout list is evidence of a policy.
And especially isn't evidence of a particular type of policy. I would also argue that it is unlikely a school would have a policy in place to only flyout women, and choose to interview men.
Meanwhile, how many years out of PhD are you? Top 5 PhD?
If the purpose of your questions is to figure out where I am in the profession, I will say (I think I said it before), I am a few years out, but pre-tenure, at a non-PhD granting institution. MRM PhD.
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OP here.
Yes I would. At my institution, we have done several searches in the past 3-4 years. In all of them, we interviewed many male and many female candidates. In one of them, only males were flown out. In the others, at least one male and at least one female were flown out. The ratio varied considerably. It is just how things worked out. We did consciously try to make sure we were fully considering people of both genders. We did not have anything I would call a quota. I am sure that if our interview list was 20 men and 0 women (or vice versa) we would have questioned it and probably made changes, but that certainly didn't come close to happening.
So I am not willing to say that a particular flyout list is evidence of a policy.
And especially isn't evidence of a particular type of policy. I would also argue that it is unlikely a school would have a policy in place to only flyout women, and choose to interview men.Thank you.
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OP here. I am not quite sure what you are getting at.
Mathematically/hypothetically speaking, the difference could occur anywhere.
Statistically speaking, according to most studies it is somewhere between the 99.99th and 99.999th percentiles where there is some evidence that there are statistically significantly more men than women.First timer to the thread chiming in.
You are incorrect, OP.
Jensen and Reynolds (1983) report that females have a 101.41 mean IQ with a 13.55 standard deviation and males have a 103.08 mean IQ with a 14.54 standard deviation.
Using these stats, one can calculate that 1.74% of females have IQs of at least 130 while 3.2% of males have an IQ above that figure. That is, males will outnumber females at least 1.84 to 1 for positions requiring an IQ of at least 130.
130 is not a high IQ at a top 100 department.
Beyond a threshold of 140, there will be 14.5 times as many males as females.
Even small differences in variance can create significant differences for people who still have modestly high IQs.
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OP you do not need to call them quotas if you don’t like the term. However , the effect of these policies is the same effect of quotas have.
If you disagree with this point please provide a counter example of a hiring policy which takes gender into account and at the same time does not produce the same effect as quotas.
I must say that on too many occasions you have been evasive and tried to obfuscate.
So please remove any doubts by giving us one example of a policy that while looking at gender , has not an effect similar to quotas
OP here.
I'm curious whether you consider either of these anecdotes "quotas":
1) The university administration offers the department funding to fly out an additional candidate, who must be female.
2) The interview candidates are split between males and females. The flyout candidates are 100% female.There is a semantic can of worms. A poster earlier defined "quota" as any policy that considers gender. That seems like a broader definition of quota than most people use. That was my point.
He also used it to rebut my point that not all universities that consider gender when hiring are using quotas. I am not sure how to engage with the argument if terms are defined that way. My point was clear to anyone not playing semantic games.You didn't answer my question. Do you consider either of those anecdotes "quotas"?
OP here. I did try to avoid the question consciously. The argument I keep trying to reiterate is that I am uncomfortable with the term "quota" being used universally to describe policies that are not really quotas. Because I think it is incendiary language.
There are occasions where schools have policies that could be described as quotas for interviews and/or flyouts. I am not trying to deny that or comment on the merits of it.
But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input. -
But in the interest of not appearing to dodge a question: I would be OK with describing the first policy as a flyout quota. It is really close to it even if it isn't technically a quota.
I don't have enough information on the second example. I am not sure what policy was in place. You are describing an output not an input.Thank you. I agree with you that (1) technically isn't a quota, but is really close to one. As for (2), just to be clear, if the interview candidates are split between males and females, but the flyout candidates are 100% male, would you also say that you are not sure what policy was in place?
OP here.
Yes I would. At my institution, we have done several searches in the past 3-4 years. In all of them, we interviewed many male and many female candidates. In one of them, only males were flown out. In the others, at least one male and at least one female were flown out. The ratio varied considerably. It is just how things worked out. We did consciously try to make sure we were fully considering people of both genders. We did not have anything I would call a quota. I am sure that if our interview list was 20 men and 0 women (or vice versa) we would have questioned it and probably made changes, but that certainly didn't come close to happening.
So I am not willing to say that a particular flyout list is evidence of a policy.
And especially isn't evidence of a particular type of policy. I would also argue that it is unlikely a school would have a policy in place to only flyout women, and choose to interview men.Meanwhile, how many years out of PhD are you? Top 5 PhD?
If the purpose of your questions is to figure out where I am in the profession, I will say (I think I said it before), I am a few years out, but pre-tenure, at a non-PhD granting institution. MRM PhD.
Cool
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OP here. I am not quite sure what you are getting at.
Mathematically/hypothetically speaking, the difference could occur anywhere.
Statistically speaking, according to most studies it is somewhere between the 99.99th and 99.999th percentiles where there is some evidence that there are statistically significantly more men than women.First timer to the thread chiming in.
You are incorrect, OP.
Jensen and Reynolds (1983) report that females have a 101.41 mean IQ with a 13.55 standard deviation and males have a 103.08 mean IQ with a 14.54 standard deviation.
Using these stats, one can calculate that 1.74% of females have IQs of at least 130 while 3.2% of males have an IQ above that figure. That is, males will outnumber females at least 1.84 to 1 for positions requiring an IQ of at least 130.
130 is not a high IQ at a top 100 department.
Beyond a threshold of 140, there will be 14.5 times as many males as females.
Even small differences in variance can create significant differences for people who still have modestly high IQs.Anyone who actually knows this literature and didn't come across it jerking off to a men's rights forum will know that what you just did was pick a controversial outlier study out of hundreds.
But any study that shows discrimination against women is "debunked". Lol.
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Nice try OP
I never defined quota as you say I didOP here. I am really sorry if I misunderstood your point. I am trying my best to act in good faith. Please let me know if there is anything I can reasonably do to restore that for you.
Here is what you said:All the policies that have the above effect are equivalent to quotas.
I was trying to say that I was concerned about the use of the word "quota" as misleading. It is being applied to lots of policies that most people wouldn't describe as quotas. And "quotas" is a particularly inflammatory word.
And my impression was that there was a dodge being made around that point, by people saying "any policy that addresses gender is basically a quota".
So that is what I meant by that comment. Again, I am sorry if you took it in a way it wasn't intended.OP do you think I used the work quotas in a misleading sense in what reported above ? Do you agree or not that some other policies have the same effect of quotas ? Please straight and motivated answers would be appreciated
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I hear you. This is the same experience I had in the last few years and it’s not going to change.
The “informal quotas “ are widespread and have the same distorsive effects of quotas.
I find the pressure from the dean / HR unacceptable, but other people in the hiring panels seem to prefer the easy way out of bowing to the pressure. I suspect they do so because they at least partially support the political views that are behind this push to hire more women/ monorities
Academia is the bastion of competence and should stay as such. It is our duty to speak up against any practice that goes against the competence principle.
good people on both sides here.
OP is right that there are not that many explicit quotas (though I ran into one personally, ouch).
and I see nothing wrong with outreach activities, encouraging URMs/females to apply, etc.
where things get murky is when provosts promise extra funding to fly out nonwhitemales (NWMs). I suppose you could argue that if you are just adding people to the pool it's not necessarily disadvantaging those would who have been brought in anyway...
what I worry more about are what I will call "informal quotas" - i.e., pressure from the president on down for the process to end up with fewer NWMs even if there are no explicit quotas. there is *tons* of such pressure at my university, and they are very careful about how they do it.
our university general counsel came by to tell us that
1/ we can't explicitly say that race or gender are a hiring criterion, but we can say that the university values a "diverse faculty"
2/ that said, we can't measure "diversity" by race & gender alone, or we'll get sued. she said be especially careful not to send emails saying that we are choosing for race/gender reasons.
3/ instead, require a "diversity statement" from each applicant and use that as part of the criteria. she was quick to point out that at 6'5" NOrdic bro (seriously, that was her example) could write an amazing diversity statement...though she acknowledged with a wry smile that most of the really-good diversity statement get written by NMWs.
4/ finally, the dean harangues us at every faculty meeting about how we are too white, too male, etc "and that has to change." but he is careful never to say explicitly that we should encourage race and gender in hiring as explicit criteria. see the loophole?
and so that is how affirmative action is implemented without quotas: massive institutional pressure + diversity statements. -
Anyone who actually knows this literature and didn't come across it jerking off to a men's rights forum will know that what you just did was pick a controversial outlier study out of hundreds.
But any study that shows discrimination against women is "debunked". Lol.Umm, OP. Maybe I am misreading you but that doesn't seem like a very scholarly response.
I don't know too many economists who are intimately familiar with the literature on IQ differences between men and women. I am not one of those very rare creatures. I doubt that you are either. I spend my time doing economics.
I wouldn't even know where to go to find a "men's rights' forum." But I guess that anything called "men's rights" must be bad, huh? Cause men should have no rights?
The numbers quoted seemed reasonable to me and accorded with other studies I've seen. There was only a 1.5 point difference in mean and a 1 point difference in std dev.
If you have better numbers, OP, please feel free to offer them. That would be more productive than engaging in vulgar, ad hominem attacks.
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Math SAT data in 2012:
Male: 532 mean; 119 variance
Female: 499 mean; 112 varianceThis pattern is similar across years.
A normal distribution implies 3.35% of males scored above 750 while only 1.25% of females did.
Supposing this is the pool that Econ APs come from, we'd expect about 73% of fresh APs to be male.
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Math SAT data in 2012:
Male: 532 mean; 119 variance
Female: 499 mean; 112 variance
This pattern is similar across years.
A normal distribution implies 3.35% of males scored above 750 while only 1.25% of females did.
Supposing this is the pool that Econ APs come from, we'd expect about 73% of fresh APs to be male.The difference is not statistically significant. And it's highly unlikely that the grade distribution does not have a long tail. On the downside.
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There were 1.66 million test-takers in 2012, lack of statistical significance is a ridiculous argument.
If you prefer non-parametric, population based statistics:
Total test-takers:
Males - 778,142
Females - 886,337Scores in 700-800 range
Males - 73,844 (9.5% of males)
Females - 44,838 (5.1% of females)If we take this broader pool (of actual 2012 college bound seniors) to be potential econ APs, then we would expect 62% male APs. This doesn't account for taste based differences. Additionally, the ratio will skew more male as we raise the threshold for the pool.