Former Labor leader Mark Latham has said that a recent study on hiring practices proves that “white male privilege is a leftie lie”, but the report actually says that diversity training is having the desired effect.
The one-time contender for the Lodge, now host of a weekly show on his Facebook page, pointed to a report put out by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet late last month and said it was proof that “the left’s rhetoric about ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘white male privilege’ has been a hoax”.
The report, Going Blind to See More Clearly by the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government (BETA), did a test study for early-stage recruitment for senior positions in the Australian Public Service (those elitists Latham and his ilk would normally rail against). The survey interviewed 2100 people from 14 agencies, including the Office of National Assessments, the Attorney-General’s Department, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and others.
They were asked to shortlist applicants for a hypothetical senior role in their agency, with some groups getting information including name and gender, while others received CVs without these details.
Where Latham was right is that the study found that participants were 2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable versus unidentifiable. Anglo-Celtic males were 6.5% less likely to be shortlisted when their names were included.
This is how Latham sees the results:
“The average Australian man deserves our respect, not demonisation. He cares enough about the people around him to help those who are willing to help themselves. There is nothing deplorable about the Australian character. We are not a nation of bigots.”
What he left out was that one of the study’s authors, BETA director Professor Michael J. Hiscox, said in the foreword that the result of the survey didn’t imply that APS had solved the problem of gender inequality or lack of diversity in the APS but that attention would be better focused on later stages of recruitment, rather than through the de-identifying of applications.
The APS has also engaged in gender equality strategies and training to promote diversity in the APS, and these factors could have had an impact on the result of the study. It was also a voluntary study, so it is possible that participants were more likely to support gender equality and diversity. The study’s authors attempted to counter this by surveying a range of APS officers weeks after the trial about their views on issues and found it was similar to those participants.
Above all else, the report said that more work needed to be done to address gender inequality, but it said de-identified CVs might not be the best way to go about it.
You should probably note that women outnumber men in the public service as a whole as well, at 56% compared to 44%.
Hate to say it, Latham’s right – “Gender and diversity” training in the APS is now resulting in discrimination against males.
As an ex Public Servant I can say that in the Seventies and Eighties many women were in junior roles compared to men. It was only in the sixties when a female APS employee was terminated upon marriage. Thank God for progress. If it is going a bit more the other way now – suck it up Latham and take it like a man, not a whining baby that has had its ice cream taken away.
Nice tu quoque. The reality is is that we should be striving for no discrimination whatsoever, not reverse discrimination.
So BETA conducts a blind study whereby applications are de-identified, with the aim of ensuring that successful candidates will be chosen based on MERIT, and not on their gender.
The results show that candidates are “2.9% more likely to shortlist female candidates and 3.2% less likely to shortlist male applicants when they were identifiable versus unidentifiable,” which was the OPPOSITE of what they had expected.
The logical conclusion then should be that the best candidates in this case happened to be men, and that their aptitude for the job had nothing to do with their gender.
Why then was the conclusion reached that different methods need to be used?
Surely the correct conclusion is that achieving gender balance means you don’t select the best candidates based on an arbitrary quota.
I should clarify (as if anyone cares or is even going to read this): the logical conclusion should be that it is in everyone’s best interest to select candidates based on their merit, not on whichever identity group said candidate belongs to.
A blind recruitment process happens to show that a particular group is selected more than when an identifiable recruitment process is conducted, in contradiction of your expected outcome. Conclusion? Not that your hypothesis is wrong, but that instead we should try something else to get the result we want.
Ignore the truth, keep dividing people, forget competence-based hierarchies, push on with your political agenda. Pathological to the core!
Speaking to the usual suspects on HateCentral, the Macquarie network, mad Marky kept getting his figures & conclusions mixed up but it didn’t matter, it was his fulmination that was important, not coherence.