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Comment by manfredo | Hacker News Reader

How is it surprising (let alone disturbing) that women and men employed in the same capacity at the same company produce the same results? That's what I'm still not getting. Why would it be reasonable to assume that a man will perform differently than a woman in the same role (let alone to be so certain of this to a degree that evidence to the contrary is "disturbing")?

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Demographics which are not represented do not have their stories told and their interests and priorities are not included in the prevailing narrative. While it is perfectly possible for people to empathize with others who are different, it takes effort and it's easy to understand why it doesn't always happen.

Because it is a sexist outcome: significantly more men have a voice (literally!) in a general interest radio show where just about any story is fair game. It is surprising because the show is largely made by woman. I imagine it is disturbing for Glass because I assume he felt him and his staff were immune to a sexist outcome.

I think it's important to think about the trends and averages in the broader society before levying accusations of sexism. If a bank's male customers have higher average account balances than the average woman that holds an account, is it fair to call the bank sexist? If a publishing company hires mostly female publishers is it a sexist company? I'd argue no in both cases. In both scenarios the disparate outcome likely stems from broader trends in society - higher incomes among men, higher readership among women. It's entirely possible and definitely worth discussing whether these trends are influenced by sexism - but that very different than calling our hypothetical bank or publishing company. An organization or process is sexist if it exerts unequal treatment on the basis of gender. It's entirely possible for a completely unbiased process to create an outcome with gender disparities.

This American Life isn't one of the primary NPR podcasts to which I listen, but if it follows the trend of other NPR podcasts it probably draws more heavily on subject matter experts (e.g. university professors) and leadership positions in private enterprises than the rest of the population. These occupations, at least the latter, are disproportionately occupied by men. One could argue that the bias towards subject matter experts is sexist, but that seems fairly weak and indirect unless it can be demonstrated that the choice of interviewing these people is motivated by a desire to interview more men than women. One could also argue that the podcast should stop its focus on subject matter experts - but that would fundamentally change the nature of the podcast, essentially making it a different product.

Without changing the product fundamentally, they can also do things such as seek out perspectives from e.g. female professors who are less-frequently interviewed and less famous than their male colleagues yet are still authorities and entertaining guests.

In fact, that's possibly the next move for TAL in the wake of this study: asking themselves, why is our staff choosing the guests that we are and what opportunities do we have to go afield and find someone fresh?

I listen to the show a fair amount. It tends toward the "human interest" side rather than "expert interview" side. In other words, the format doesn't seem to me to have a lot of in-built preference for subject matter experts who might tend to be men for reasons beyond the show's control.

I don't think that it's at all surprising. We do, after all, live in an extremely sexist society. In order to achieve gender balance, staff would need to be sexist, in the sense of favoring underrepresented female voices. And that would be a good thing.

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