<story><title>We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xienze</author><text>I honestly feel like this sort of thing is a waste of time.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s pretend someone invents the perfect &amp;quot;gender bias-free&amp;quot; system: no names, no faces, voices are flawlessly transcribed on-the-fly so you can&amp;#x27;t pick up on speech patterns.  What if it works perfectly and you still end up hiring more men than women?  I think exercises like this may end up giving people answers they don&amp;#x27;t want to hear.&lt;p&gt;So, stop wasting time with stuff like this.  If you&amp;#x27;re bothered by the fact that there&amp;#x27;s more men in your company than women just hire more women until you get your desired ratio.  You&amp;#x27;ve already made your minds up (&amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s too many men here, clearly we&amp;#x27;re biased against women during the hiring process&amp;quot;) and I doubt anything will make you think differently, so just go ahead and fix the imbalance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Tyr42</author><text>There is evidence to the contrary, where they have run this experiment in the real world. This is for Orchestras.&lt;p&gt;As late as 1970, the top five orchestras in the U.S. had fewer than 5% women. It wasn’t until 1980 that any of these top orchestras had 10% female musicians. But by 1997, they were up to 25% and today some of them are well into the 30s.&lt;p&gt;In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made.&lt;p&gt;Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And, indeed, the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions.&lt;p&gt;So there is another field like CS where this approach actually helped a significant amount.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;curt-rice.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;what-the-worlds-best-orchestras-can-teach-us-about-gender-discrimination&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;curt-rice.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;what-the-worlds-best-orchest...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xienze</author><text>I honestly feel like this sort of thing is a waste of time.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s pretend someone invents the perfect &amp;quot;gender bias-free&amp;quot; system: no names, no faces, voices are flawlessly transcribed on-the-fly so you can&amp;#x27;t pick up on speech patterns.  What if it works perfectly and you still end up hiring more men than women?  I think exercises like this may end up giving people answers they don&amp;#x27;t want to hear.&lt;p&gt;So, stop wasting time with stuff like this.  If you&amp;#x27;re bothered by the fact that there&amp;#x27;s more men in your company than women just hire more women until you get your desired ratio.  You&amp;#x27;ve already made your minds up (&amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s too many men here, clearly we&amp;#x27;re biased against women during the hiring process&amp;quot;) and I doubt anything will make you think differently, so just go ahead and fix the imbalance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>omginternets</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m always surprised by the strong underlying assumption that removing interviewer&amp;#x2F;managerial bias will result in a gender ratio of 50%.  There&amp;#x27;s research to suggest that this assumption is flawed:  [0]&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the idea that anatomy and physiology don&amp;#x27;t condition preferences or behaviors flies in the face of everything we know about human biology and (embodied) cognition.  Let&amp;#x27;s recognize gender&amp;#x2F;feminist theory for what they are:  a &lt;i&gt;sociological&lt;/i&gt; theories, not scientific ones.&lt;p&gt;Equality, in the sense of gender or racial equality, does not mean we&amp;#x27;re all the same &lt;i&gt;de naturae&lt;/i&gt;.  It means we should be treated the same &lt;i&gt;de jure&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;publication&amp;#x2F;38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;publication&amp;#x2F;38061313_Men_and_Th...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>