>>Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of women is greater than 20% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar.
"Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of white people is greater than 95% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar."
I don't think it would get much sympathy but it's an equivalent with race substituted for sex (both are protected and it's illegal to discriminate based on them).
>>Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
If you own a pub and want only white waitresses so you only invite white women for interviews you can do that without lowering the bar as well. Still you are discriminating even if you put elaborate system out there which magically result in only (to make the point stronger, substitute with a ratio like 90-10 or 80-20 to make the situation equivalent) applications from white women at the end.
I'm not defending or attacking affirmative action itself, since the topic is so politically charged that arguing about it on the internet with strangers is futile.
My claim is a much narrower one, that you can hire a disproportionate amount of female developers without lowering the bar if you bias your incoming hires. It can be simultaneously true that Google's diversity policies are harmful to quality (because they restrict where Google hires from) while their female developers are as qualified as their male developers (because they came from the same place and meet the same standards).
Yes it might be although it's very unlikely to happen. I wrote about it in another comment but in short: once you start hiring more (proportionally) from a smaller pool then that pool become less qualified on average (because you fished out better candidates). Over time this can only result in you doing more and more to overlook candidates from the bigger pool if want to sustain your policy.
If more companies are doing that then it's impossible to sustain without lowering the bar. If only you are doing that there is no point because then others will hire more men (as there is more qualified men left proportionally as you took bigger % of qualified women).
I am saying that the policy of "we don't lower the bar, we just look more into avenues to hire more women specifically" is somewhere between pointless and dishonest (dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex).
EDIT:
As to affirmative action: I agree it's not the place for debating ethics of it. I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).
that pool become less qualified on average (because you fished out better candidates)
This rests on the assumption that hiring from a given pool exhausts it. It seems intuitive that hiring students from a university or bootcamp would have the opposite effect, as would hiring students from a particular academic background, since unemployment/pay metrics and prestige would drive more students there.
dishonest as in created to hide the discrimination based on sex
Since the clearly stated goal of affirmative action is to hire less of a majority group, it seems more likely that such a policy would be created to prevent imposter syndrome and "my male co-workers think I'm incompetent because of all the diversity hires" syndrome. With such a policy, nobody is a diversity hire.
> I am saying that affirmative action = lowering the bar either directly or indirectly and there is no way around that fact (at least industry wise, you can maybe sustain it locally if you are ok with others skewing their ratio in the other direction).
So it implies lowering the bar unless it doesn't.
Companies can put more effort into finding woman candidates without caring whether the whole industry does so. If some companies bias toward women (without lowering the bar), and some companies don't bias, then the overall effect is that qualified women can get hired instantly, and more of them might be encouraged to enter the industry.
"Choosing to recruit only from pools where the proportion of white people is greater than 95% isn't quite the same as lowering the bar."
I don't think it would get much sympathy but it's an equivalent with race substituted for sex (both are protected and it's illegal to discriminate based on them).
>>Nevertheless, it's a bit more complicated than just lowering the bar for women.
If you own a pub and want only white waitresses so you only invite white women for interviews you can do that without lowering the bar as well. Still you are discriminating even if you put elaborate system out there which magically result in only (to make the point stronger, substitute with a ratio like 90-10 or 80-20 to make the situation equivalent) applications from white women at the end.