The current gender imbalance exists because preferential treatment is given to men all along in one way or another. So pushing the question back to "educating the best people" raises the same issues.

@ElizabethHenning I'm not sure I got what you mean so I won't answer, could you rephrase it please?

-1 hiring the best people, regardless of their gender - While I agree with this sentiment, there are many roles of a faculty member, and when there is a large gender imbalance, the gender of one candidate can put them in a better position to do things like serve as a role model and mentor to female students. Who is to say what is best? Gender aside, it's hard to decide who are the "best" candidates.

Seconding @Kimball: the notion that there are "best" candidates is, at best, naive, and already laden with implicit biases, etc. In particular, it's not just about paper counts or any other easily quantifiable thing...

Decision theoretically, you use a signal of productivity (subjective evaluation based on cv/papers) to determine whom to hire. Now you learn that a new variable "gender" is highly predictive of productivity. Should you start favoring women? Of course, unless you can prove that you can construct a signal that is informative enough that the gender variable is obsolete. Have you proven in your answer that "educating everybody" adjusts your initial signal of productivity sufficiently? I don't think so, -1.

@paulgarrett what if the notion is naive? Then hire randomly? Hire woman cause they are woman? Naive as it may be it's clearly what you should do,, try to understand what's the best choice and do it. Not doing so would be foolish.

@HRSE So, hire someone based on gender by default, until you can prove it's not counter-productive? Nah mate

@HRSE Until you present evidence that the "gender" variable is highly predictive of productivity (or is useful at all), then I don't really follow your point.

@ElizabethHenning Prove that.

@User2341 If we were to believe that all gender differences in pay/academic standing were due to productivity differences, we would not even have this debate right now.

@ElizabethHenning, I can't speak for others, but it would convince me. As far I can tell, evidence indicates that most of the gender discrepancy in most professions is due to factors other than preferential treatment. If you can offer data suggesting otherwise, I would gladly shift my perception of such matters.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I did not make any such claim.

Here is partial evidence from economics erinhengel.com/research/publishing_female.pdf

@goblin There is an astonishing amount of evidence which is consistently ignored by the people who trot out the same "long tail" etc. arguments every time gender disparity comes up. I'm not even going to consider discussing this unless you make it clear that you're asking in good faith by stating exactly what you would regard as convincing evidence.

@ElizabethHenning, I'm asking in good faith.

@goblin: There are many books that touch on this subject and present various lines of evidence. Shankar Vedantam's The Hidden Brain (2009) is very accessible, and gives compelling (if anecdotal) evidence from the experience of transmen and transwomen who transitioned genders midcareer. Virginia Valian's Why So Slow? (1997) gives a much more comprehensive view, and is almost entirely about this. It makes a strong case that very small amounts of unintentional, hard-to-notice preferential treatment, repeated over time, end up accounting for almost all of the observed gender imbalance.

Curious if @Runlikehell thinks affirmative action is racist.

@Fermiparadox: Please take your comment here.

Oops

I reposted it thinking i accidentally deleted it.

Finally, @everybody: Please stay nice and be respectful of each other..

@ElizabethHenning Could you provide peer reviewed research that proves your following claim: "preferential treatment is given to men". Books and anecdotal evidence are not scientific proof.

@Fermiparadox, I see little reason to prioritize peer review articles over the book format. Evidence is evidence in any format, and weak evidence can be criticized irrespective of the format; so there's really not much danger here. I'd say its worth taking a closer look at ruakh's suggestion of "Why So Slow" for these and other reasons.

@Fermiparadox, also, though scientifically valid evidence is very important in highly political issues such as this, raising the bar to "scientific proof" seems a bit unfair. As far as I can tell, science never really "proves" anything per se.

@goblin there is never a 100% certainty when proving something, but often it's good enough. Even if it's far from 100% it can still be useful; for example men-women crime rates. I would be extremely cautious walking by a man in the night while much more relaxed walking by a woman. Although the vast majority of men aren't criminals, the vast majority of criminals are men.

@Kai I don't know what affermative action is. Define it and I'll think about it

Sorry for any mistakes, I wrote it in a hurry and English is not my first language. Wikipedia article is very long, I have no time to read it and understand it completely today. After a first superficial reading I can say that it depends on how it is implemented. It can surely be racist if implemented in some wrong ways, but at the same time it can be a positive thing if implemented in the right way.

For example giving access to education equally to everyone being them black or white, male or female etc, especially in the first phases of growth is not racist at all. Giving places at the highest levels of education to people because of their skin color is racist. I think we have to intervene on the society as a whole to avoid discriminations, it's not just hiring someone or giving some scholarship, that's a silly way of thinking.

If the level of education is the same for every kid, regardless of their race, you don't need special scholarship or special hiring for historically discriminated groups, they'll get them without the preferential route. Giving the preferential route without trying to work on the whole system is a way to not solve these problems.

A problem in the USA is that rich people can afford a better education than poor people, there are more rich white people than rich black people, white guy get a better education and is likely to land a job that requires that education, while the black guy couldn't.

The problem is at the bottom, not at the top. Until you don't fight for equality of opportunities at the bottom you can't fight for equality of opportunities at the top. You sistematically educate black people in a shitty way and then ask for places for them in top universities. Give them the chance to earn those places instead of faking a battle. You're hiding behind a finger.

@Fermiparadox, I'm not sure I see your reasoning. If the "evidence" is all anecdotal, the book can be flipped through in 20 minutes and dismissed, and the next time it's brought up in conversation, you can say: "I've actually had a pretty good look at that particular book, and no, the evidence presented therein isn't so strong." On the other hand, if there is high-quality evidence in said book, then its worth knowing about.

@goblin the user you commented to earlier was @rotard

@rotard I didn't mean to ping you

@rotard