6 Comments

I'm accepting their claim about where the main problem lies.

Expand full comment

Sorry to negative but it seems that this will only make 1st level hiring biases a bit more like 2nd level hiring biases than currently. And it's not even totally clear whether *that* would reduce or increase 1st level bias.

Expand full comment

The reason why fewer women are promoted to managing positions is that women are less able or less dedicated leaders. If they were equally able and willing to put in the 20,000 hours needed to grow into leadership, large numbers of all-woman-managed companies would compete on an equal footing or out-compete male-only-managed companies. They don't, QED.

Expand full comment

Interesting thought experiment, but it's a problem that isn't real and wouldn't be worth solving if it was.

Expand full comment

I like the idea but it is unlikely to be embraced by those driving the criticism since they tend to see the issue in moral or justice terms not pragmatic ones. As such a system which openly accepts a criteria (future promotion) which itself suffers from bias is likely to be attacked and seen as accepting or tolerating bias even if it’s overall effect is to reduce it.

This will be especially true if ever implemented since it will inevitably prove true that there will be some real, even if small, effect of some gender or religious/cultural effect on performance so that even if the net effect of the program is to reduce bias it will be seen as unacceptable by the loudest voices in this space.

Again. I like the idea. I’m just pessimistic about it being adopted because the incentives are against it.

Expand full comment

Wouldn't we expect any institutional bias against female employees to also reduce their probability of promotion past the first-level-manager stage? I would think traders would logically take that into account, and the market prices of female candidates would be lower than those of male candidates of equal ability.

Expand full comment