Is the 50-50 male-female hiring rule fair? In many offices the applicants are 80-20, thus women are 4 times more likely to make it. Isn’t this the definition of discrimination?

likefunnysmartuplifting
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This is a pointless debate because a 50-50 rule does not exist so the premise is just wrong. OP, you could have realized this yourself by looking at your starting cohort and noting that it includes more males than females (unless you’re at a boutique - males outnumber females at all major consultancies)

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To chime in with M2, experience and gender shouldn't preclude OP from participating in the discussion. I would expect women in leadership here to give OP and others solid understanding and reasoning so he can walk away with appreciation for womens challenges.

Do you actually expect him to support womens initiatives after telling him to sit down and shut up?

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As a trans man, I found that people were constantly giving me the benefit of the doubt and opportunities to shine as a woman, which I took as the norm. Transitioning has shown me that men are basically given no support and we live in a sink or swim environment. My lived experience does not match with any of the stereotypes I was told to expect, and the lack of support I found as a man has made this job really hard

likehelpfulsmart

Bcg4 there are already documentaries on FTM experiences, fyi. They echo what BCG3 shared. I have yet to hear a FTM trans person talk about how they were showered with privilege after transitioning

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One explanation: if four times as many male candidates as female candidates are applying for roles, there’s a problem in the recruiting pipeline. And that’s absolutely a metric that hiring orgs should be tracking and addressing; many are. For tour scenario, instead of thinking of it as women being four times as likely as men to be successful once they apply, think of it as men being four times as likely as women to even make it to that point.

And it’s extremely unlikely that the firm you were talking about “maxed out man space.” That sounds a lot like hallway assumptions around why someone I know / like / can relate to wasn’t hired.

likesmart

D2 - my bad. Show me a reputable source that stands behind your fallacious arguments and I’ll delete my comment about you getting an online degree in stats, and reading HuffPo and Twitter for ideas.

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The explanation is that women are often subject to discrimination / not given the same opportunities throughout childhood and adulthood. So someone with the same amount of raw intelligence or grit or ambition might face systematic challenges that prevent them from achieving their full potential. Hiring a woman who on paper might seem to be at 80% might mean you’re hiring someone incredibly talented and smart and determined who has also overcome a lot to get there that a male counterpart might not be subject to

likehelpful

Try walking in our heels for a day at the top levels of corporate America! Have you ever been a woman? If not, have some respect for others' unfamiliar exeriences.

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BA1 - honestly probably some of it, feeling comfortable in your own skin definitely impacts how people respond to you.

However there is *so* much research showing that men and women dont face the same evaluations and assumptions - this isn't a lone data point, just another voice in the chorus affirming things like "Men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, women are assumed to be beginners until proven otherwise"

likesmart

So in Accenture there there is guidance that all MD promotions will be 50/50. There are 10 SM's in my practice: 8M and 2W. Promotion ratio is 1 of 4 SMs make it to MD. Meaning, while the 2 ladies are competing for 1 spot, us 8 gents have to compete for the remaining 1 spot. Can you say that the 7 SMs who won't get a promo are all less talented than the 1 W who did? Nope... BTW: if you have AA or Indian males in your group as a white male it becomes even more challenging because of these affirmative action guidelines.
Since it's up or out, after a couple of years you lose pretty good SMs who were past down for promotion.
Even though 3 of 4 of my counselees are women, and I do everything I can to support them and get the promoted, it is somewhat frustrating. And before anyone says "now you know what being disenfranchised feels like" - I am sorry, but I don't believe I have to pay for the sins of 1000 generations of of misogyny and racism. I spent my whole life and will continue to support women in STEM and consulting.
Fire your arrows away, get the pitchforks out... that's fine.

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D: SMs on my practice are part of our bi-weekly sales call. It's also fairly easy to go to Salesforce and see who got sales credit for what (only 10 SMs). In my specific example all SMs on the team had a great year, good people, and well liked by the client (my practice lead likes to send bad apples elsewhere). I'd say from Analyst to Manager, it is true that there are softer elements to promo, but from M onwards, hard KPIs play a much bigger part

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Is there a 50-50 hiring rule?

likefunny

At my firm there is a 50/50 gender quota for graduate program so it does happen

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Men are given plenty of more opportunities than women because there remains implicit bias that men are more confident, business-oriented, etc.

Many clients remain in the flyover, backwards country, and they would prefer having a male consultant due to implicit bias, even though a female consultant is equally competent/capable.

There may be a difference in hiring for women as others have pointed out: there are likely issues of access and information sharing, i.e. are we even targeting enough to receive applications from women?

In addition to being the right, equitable thing to do, hiring more women is also good for business. Diverse teams are often more nimble and successful than non-diverse teams. Women bring many strengths and unique perspectives, and there shouldn’t be any uproar over if they have a slightly easier path in hiring, because they most likely have no significant advantage, given how male-dominated everything still is

likesmart

Looking past the women in a meeting, etc

I know that this post is provocative, but I wanted to stimulate a fair discussion (and most of you gave valuable insights).

My point of view is this:
I’m 100% in favor of all the events for women in consulting to boost the number of applications. It is a problem that the applications are 80-20 for sure.

I’m 150% against any form of discrimination. For me people are just people, I don’t care if they are male female white black asian or whatever. If you are good at your job, you deserve it.

I’m against trying to fix artificially the numbers. Most of the HR or marketing are women but I wouldn’t put a policy “oh please put more men in the HR and marketing”. We as a society should explore the root causes of these problems and address them as hard as we can. Fixing the top will make us feel good without doing really anything about the real problems.
Someone was saying that maybe a woman that gets to that point is more motivated/smarter/has more grit. If it is true, she has to be hired! Not because someone said you should hire a girl, because she deserves it! And if an interviewer shows discrimination patterns (not only against women), please, fire him

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Interviewers can be women too 🤦🏼‍♀️

likefunny

Just going to echo that I’ve been involved in recruiting at 3 different consulting firms, and none of them have had a 50-50 rule.

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Atk2 - you are either lying or just not involved. It’s an explicit discussion between recruiters, HR, and the consultants leading the process.

I've heard of many initiatives to get women hired and into leadership positions at consulting companies, but haven't heard of any kind of lower bar or quota for women. I do think this kind of phenomenon is real in certain functions/industries, though. for example, my SWE friends in hiring committees at F500s say that their companies often take underqualified female SWEs over qualified males because of the huge gender imbalance at their companies. I personally don't have much of an issue with taking a woman over a man if they are both equally competent, but don't think there should be different bars for hiring.

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When people say women are hired with lower qualifications though, you’re talking about qualifications that have been designed and aimed at men since kindergarten. There are all kinds of hidden biases in testing all throughout school and college that favor men. As such, employers are often just trying to rebalance the system that got them to the point of more male applicants than women. I agree that this is not ideal but until you can correct the prior twenty years of inbuilt bias, what choice do we have?

likesmart

Agree wholeheartedly with VP and ATK that education favors women; hence outside of Stem degrees, VAST majority of college grads are women now

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None of our firms have 50/50 hiring rules. In addition, all of our firms have minimum qualifying requirements. End of conversation.

likefunny

So glad this partner is intimately familiar with all recruiting guidelines across all firms. Inspirational really.

It’s not a real rule. They encourage it so interviewers will take female candidates seriously.

likefunny

There is a 50/50 gender quota for the graduate program at my firm

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I have to agree with OP. It’s easy to think about this in terms of groups but when you think about it in terms of individuals it is a tough reality. These policies essentially benefit a group of people as a unit while hurting a group of individuals. You can argue it is a practice that is required to remediate historical mistakes and current biases regarding the treatment of women, but you have to acknowledge that men (at the individual level) are being discriminated against and not given equal opportunities/ support as a result of it, for the sole reason that they are not a woman

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But I would put out the argument that we need special programs for URMs because the standard programs are targeted towards the majority. Not saying this is right but in my opinion, we don’t need to provide the same access to programs etc to make it “fair” because the playing field isn’t “fair”.

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I haven’t had a chance to read the comments, but I am curious if you are for or against affirmative action OP? While may firms (including mine) do not have a hard rule on 50/50 hiring, we have acknowledged that some groups (women, black, indigenous) have faced more headwinds than tailwinds in the consulting and corporate world historically, and we are trying to right that via programs to help these groups through interview processes. We are trying to level the playing field. This is important because lack of diversity actually hurts our firms. We need diversity to help us develop new ideas and win new business, for example.

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My comment is that there is not a RULE or QUOTA of 50/50. We DO strive for it, as I have said....we DO try to get there, which is a good thing. I have never ever seen an instance of us removing male candidates just because we need to hit 50/50 in first round as you have implied. Do we also want to share the partner hire email from not long ago that went out showing that 1/8 hires was female? Clearly we are not tied to a quota.

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Does anyone else not think it’s ironic that women want everyone to believe that they can do anything a man can do, but at the same time want hand holding every step of the way and cry “sexism” at any sign of adversity/not having the red carpet to the c-suite rolled out before them?

likeuplifting

Are you a woman? Is that what you do?

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Unfollowing due to how toxic this is towards women!

likefunny

This is magnificent! Best tip of the day. Pulling all kind of nonsense off my notifications. Thanks again

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Hey OP, my starting class was 80-20 with the majority of hires being white male. This is obviously just my own example but I absolutely do not think your statement is true.

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Yeah, maybe in your experience it didn’t help your ethnicity’s males, but I believe that the corporate world LARGELY still supports white males. I do agree that minority men are very underrepresented.

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