this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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While ignoring gender sounds good on the surface, I think by ignoring we default to the uncritical and unthinking status quo, which unfortunately is still gendered in nature, i.e. there is something called "implicit bias" where people have internalized biases and preferences that they are not even aware they are thinking or having.
Gender blindness can still be a useful tool, for example, instead of attacking OP for asking how to reduce gender bias, you could have suggested a HR policy that removes any gendered aspects of candidates CVs or applications so that decisions on who gets interviewed can't be subject to those biases.
Giving an opposite opinion of your own does not mean someone is attacking you, and it's sad that you feel that.
At any rate, you are saying just what I said, only with different words. It seems that you prefer for it to be a bias, only for it to be in your favour. Which sounds only natural given we are all humans, but i fail to see how it'll solve anything. Putting incompetent people in power is just wrong.
this thread should be suggesting the hr policies to ignore sex instead of favouring a specific sex. What's wrong with going with merit?
It was your tone, not that the opinion was dissenting, that made it seem aggressive or like an attack. My suggestion was how you could have worded it differently to make your argument so it comes across as reasonable and not just dismissive and rude. (That's just my perception, not trying to litigate that or insist my perspective is the only way to interpret your message, but it is the perspective I'm coming from when reading and responding to you.)
The way you articulate the opposing perspective is with strawmen ... I can't tell if you really think we are "pro-bias" and in favor of putting incompetent people in power when expressing concerns with gender inequality, or if you are being intellectually lazy and are in a habit of arguing in bad faith against strawmen so you feel confident in your position and don't have to consider other ideas?
As a conversational partner, it sends signals that you aren't worth engaging or taking seriously - you just might consider that ...
Either way, characterizing advocating for gender equality in the workplace with policies that are not just gender-blind as being equivalent to putting incompetent people in power and institutionalizing bias comes across as either deeply unaware, or overtly sexist ... I will assume it's the prior, that you're just unaware. (See how I do that, I give you the benefit of the doubt, even when you assume the worst about my perspectives? That's because I'm trying to be nice and I want to have a conversation with you, and because I would prefer to have a real discussion here rather than a pointless shouting match. I hope my investment is worthwhile, and not a mistake 😅)
So why do I believe this? Well, when you only focus only on merit and take entirely gender-blind approaches (which I can understand the immediate appeal of - that sounds great, right?), what happens is that you entrench the gender inequalities that already existed ... that's because the inequality does not just happen at that one moment, e.g. when deciding which candidate to hire or who gets the scholarship.
Women are disadvantaged from birth, and the results of those inequalities throughout their lives are compounding - the way teachers, police, doctors, parents, and everyone else in society treats them is different and worse, and this results in worse outcomes. We have study after study showing that minorities (including women) experience more stress and this translates to worse performance (e.g. take this study that found even just the ways that unconscious, unintentional bias impacts women in STEM, here's a PDF link; another study found that even when you control for job satisfaction, work environment, and self-evaluation, the biased ways people treat women were a predictor in those women were a statistically significant predictor of turnover). That is to say, the perceived incompetence and poor outcomes of minorities is due to the ways they are mistreated, and we should probably do something to even those odds. Those interventions are partially what help mitigate gender inequality, and what we're talking about here.
An example to make this more concrete: as a marginalized group, women are victims of sexual and physical violence at much higher rates than men - a young sexual assault victim (whether male of female) is much less likely to succeed (let alone excel) in their studies than someone who hasn't been victimized, and guess what - the differences in who is a victim is gendered.
By eliminating gender as a consideration when creating policies, you eliminate the possibility for increasing the odds of success and recovery for marginalized genders. This isn't just theoretical, it's empirical, and it's not really controversial either.
Here's a helpful source you could dig into if you feel like it:
https://gender.study/issues-of-gender-and-development/gender-blind-approach-inequality-failure/