Reverse discrimination

[Henkie36]

Well, no, and people might call me a sexist for it, but I don't care. Down here, the new commisioner of the police for the entire country had a very experiencend and highly recommended man for it, and a less experiencend or recommended woman both applying for the job, and what do you know, the woman got the job because she's a woman. I think I can safely say that I was pretty darn pissed when I heard about this. Who cares about the gender of the person your putting in charge, the police is already a mess down here and we might as well get the best person to clean it up!
Some more: in Sweden, there is a quotum for a minimum percentage of women a company should have if want to give out shares for themselves. When this law passed the parlement, and that same year, 167 companies left the stock market, while normally this number is around twenty. Great job Sweden, you just took a giant piss all over your own fine economy just so that some extreme feminist will stop whining.
As far as I'm concerned, there should be no difference between men and women in terms of getting a job, wheter or not this is in favor or against the women.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Not at such...where I live, a big fuss is made of Equal Employment Opportunities, but it's specified that the most qualified person still gets teh job.

On the other hand, if there's a places where X tends to get hired over Y, if a business hires mostly X, it's not an unreasonable assumption that it's due to discrimination, and that they should hire more Y. Occasionally you'll be wrong, and some Y will have to be hired just to make up the numbers, but one the whole, such practices could be beneficial in some cases.

IMHO, it's permissable to screw over a number of X, to stop a larger number of Y being screwed over. It's just not desirable.

 

[Mikkaddo]

What do you think of that situation :

I just finish a diploma to be an IT technician. In the company I work for, there was a opening for that, so I apply. We were two that asked for the job, and I got it. Last week I was moving my stuff to my new desk and the guy that I was in competition for the job with told me: "it's just because you're a girl, otherwise I would had the job".

My first reaction was to think, ok he's pissed off because I get the job, but after talking a bit with my coworkers and my boss, it turns out that he was right. I've got the knowledge to get that job and my boss tell me he's sure that I will be good at it, but the other guy have more experience than me, and the final decision was indeed make to put a girl in the IT department because there was none before, and that they wanted to show that they promote diversity in all the company departments.

Now I'm a bit furious because I don't know if my coworkers think i'm a good tech or if I'm just that girl that get the job because I'm a girl.

Do you think it's acceptable to use gender or race to determine who will get a job between two persons roughly equal otherwise ?

A person being or not being hired/fired etc. based SOLELY on federal/race/religion/sexuality or whatever else is DISCRIMINATION no matter what the reason, they aren't showing they promote diversity, they are showing they are terrified of being called sexist. If a male counter part is more qualified, he deserves the job. If it comes down to both of you having equal qualifications, I'd honestly flip a coin, but the fact that you are female and the IT staff had no females before should never have been a deciding factor. The fact that they hired you for it simply for being female is sexist itself. Personally I think you should complain, though it could cost you the position if the other person was more qualified.

 

[Mallefunction]

We had that problem in my school. There were 3 kids with straight A's in my class (I being one of them). One of them as well as myself were white. Guess which kid always got lauded by the school, getting in the paper with all the awards?

Also, they'd take some kids who were somewhat talented and threw them in front of other kids just because of race (mostly the native kids) I get that diversity is important, but it's fucked up that they didn't celebrate our accomplishments WITH them.

 

[franconbean]

At the end of the day, its still discrimination, whether it's "Positive" discrimination or not.
Liberal society is supposed to reward the hard-working (and to a lesser extent, the talented). that's not to say that the OP isn't those things, but flouting an individual who would probably perform better? That's not how its supposed to work, and at the end of the day, it doesn't produce acceptance for diversity.

 

[Prosis]

I think its fine that they hired based on gender.

Either they hire a woman simply because she's a woman, or they get sued/bad rep by someone for not having any women employed (which would imply that the company is sexist against women). Sure, best case scenario would be that they would hire the better qualified person. But preventing lawsuits and bad press is more important than getting a better worker.

Is it discrimination? Yes.

Is it unfair? Yes.

Is it wrong? It can be argued either way. The requirement for diversity also prevents companies from hiring solely from a certain race/gender, or from discriminating. Sometimes this benefits the minority race/gender (of the company, in this case being women), and sometimes it harms the majority race/gender (in this case being the more experienced guy).

I can understand the whole "harming your self esteem" thing. But I wouldn't complain. Imagine how the guy would think, "She got the job, despite me being more qualified for it, AND she complains that she got the job."


If I were in that position, personally, I would be happy to have a job in such a bad economy. I would also give 120% at work, to ensure that my co-workers don't regret turning down the experienced guy, and prove that I'm a hard and good worker, not just "that chick we picked up to fulfill quota"

 

[euclides34]

If they promote diversity to avoid a lawsuit, that means that they really don't care at all and would rather keep up apperaences than actually do anything in a real or meaningful way. now I'm well aware of the biases and prejudices that exist in our society, but affrimative action and realted hireing practices will only nuture new prejudices and biases. not to mention the shear amount of resentment it will engender. this really only goes towards my overarching thesis of human behavoir, which is: the one thing we excell at above all else is fucking ourselves over.

 

[Spectral Dragon]

Regular discrimination, still not okay, but shouldn't whoever runs the company hire whoever they want, based on whatever criteria they decide? They'll have to face the consequenses if they seem sexist, racist or whatever, but if they want a female engineer, and one applies, then I see no reason not to hire them. It's their loss if the candidate has less experience.

 

[Frankster]

Ah yes... These kinda stories are what fuel the "male whites are the new minority" way of thinking for some.

I'm not sure how widespread this is but some companies do indeed factor in gender and ethnicity when looking for a new employee,it just makes the company look good and allows them to publish all sorts of statistics to prove the company is awesome.

I know not whether it is correct, all I know is OP has nothing to feel bad about, not your fault the company adopted this pc mentality and you had no impact on the decision.

 

[Qitz]

Welcome to Affirmative Action! Hope you enjoy being told that your such an inferior person that you need every bit of help you can get.

Granted, when it was first implemented it was needed to help keep discrimination to a minimum but it's not that big of a requirement now. Giving people things automatically simply based on race, gender, anything besides talent or skill is just plain BS.

 

[DazBurger]

Theres no such thing as reverse discrimination, just discrimination.

 

[SeanSeanston]

Welcome to Affirmative Action! Hope you enjoy being told that your such an inferior person that you need every bit of help you can get.

Yes, that's another major point to make: How ironic such things are, since it probably sets back the progress of women and belittles them more than it does harm to anything else.

One example is that this results in more unqualified women doing jobs poorly. Leading people to associate women with incapability and not being fit for proper jobs or able to acquire jobs by proper means.

But it's all part of the carefully balanced machinery that keeps our modern world going around exactly like those who run it would like... so it's much a muchness.

 

[Jakub324]

You're clearly good enough, or you wouldn't have got the job, right?

 

[esperandote]

I have always dissaprooved that, but being honest probably your boss is being pressured to hire diversifiedly (word?) to avoid lawsuits and stuff.

 

[Fledge]

I funking hate employers like this that are so scared of appearing discriminative, that they discrminate to avoid it...

 

[Kingsman]

Finally, something we can agree on.

By giving "opportunities" to less-qualified minorities, you don't address the problem of discrimination in a workplace- you acknowledge it by specifying that there is indeed a difference between people, and that that difference is more important to deal with than actually hiring people who are more qualified for a job.

You want to be tolerant? Be color-blind. Take a look at hard facts, hire based on them, and nothing else. We start bowing our heads to give minorities more room, we will literally see arguments for letting people get away with murder "for the greater good."

Not like we don't see those already, though...

 

[caselj01]

I'll let you decide for yourself whether you think this is a legitimate argument or not, but a "diversity" policy such as you are describing OP, is often justified by saying that a broader spectrum of people is better for solving problems/coming up with ideas because there are more people from different backgrounds or with different ways of thinking. So you could argue that you wern't just hired for your ovaries, but because you are adding a "new perspective" to the division which that other guy was unable to provide.

Although as far as I'm concerned, any gender discrimination of this kind is a much smaller problem than those people who manage to get a job just because their uncle owns the company or something like that. God those people shit me.

 

[tahrey]

Well, lucky for you I guess, to land a job in this economy... problem is that might be what a lot of other people are thinking if they find out. IE lucky to be born with the right set of chromosomes to (unwittingly) take advantage of a short sighted HR policy which favoured that characteristic over actual suitability for the job.

Or, who knows? Did you do any kind of aptitude tests, etc? Maybe your performance in that, or your specific set of qualifications and experience, actually meant you were the more suitable candidate despite the length of the other applicant's CV? A long work history is no guarantee of skill or knowledge. They could just be having a dumb joke with you that "of course we hired you... SOMEONE had to even up this sausage party a bit".

There may be a touch of regular discrimination at work, too. As teching has quite a pastoral, interpersonal, customer service element to it, they maybe thought that hiring someone with better "inherent" skills in that regard (to get into their mindset here; for the moment, I'm not espousing my own personally held views) would be quite valuable to improve the client experience as well as, yknow, making them look better. Because women can talk and emphasise better than guys, right?

I dunno, I wouldn't chuck the job away over it, guilt or otherwise. Unless you see the guy destitute in a couple years time when there were other jobs you were also being interviewed for with a good chance of success (or having even got offers since taking this one)... It's their decision, which you took advantage of without knowing the full implications. Fortune has rolled in your favour, let the ones who made the call live with it. Hopefully you'll do an excellent job and it'll prove to be the best piece of quasi sexism they ever indulged in.