You're wrong. I've participated in it, multiple times, due to a mandate from upper management, at a well known company.
I don't know how to get through to people who are absolutely convinced that people who claim it's happening are just being paranoid insecure sexists leading to biased assumptions, and I don't understand why their mind refuses to consider the possibility that these people are correct.
Is it even surprising? Of course it's going to happen. Everyone is getting sued over this, and there is activism and PR wars everywhere. How do you think companies are going to respond? Nobody wants to be next, so they have to increase representation. Executives cannot actually do anything to increase representation, other than set goals for their employees to carry out. That is how execs manage. By the time it gets down to the rank-and-file, how to do it doesn't matter. They know it needs to get done, and nobody wants to be the reason that an exec's goals are not met, so they will just make it happen. This happens with goals all the time, and number of women hired is in no way different. Remember when Microsoft told shareholders they were going to get 1 billion devices running Windows 10, and what they started doing to forcefully upgrade machines? If the rank and file resort to force installing Windows to meet that goal, how do you think a company like MS are going to handle meeting their diversity targets? Or Wells Fargo with their account opening scandal that was motivated by executive goals for numbers of new accounts?
This sucks for everybody, but most of all for the people it's supposed to help. Now, those who did meet the bar look just like those who didn't meet the bar but were hired as tokens. Looking the same would not be an issue were it not for identity politics.
You've captured my thoughts on this to the T. I feel people are too emotionally involved to have rational, civilized, productive discussion... but for very very understandable reasons. After all, the whole topic of identity politics revolves around, well, one's identity, and self worth and livelihood.
It's hard to separate one's ego from something as visceral as that.
It's easy to posit that those unaffected could form "more objective" observations when emotions are not in play.
I say this while aware of the potential biases inherent in both of these statements. So what can be done to better approach this? It's hard.
I don't know how to get through to people who are absolutely convinced that people who claim it's happening are just being paranoid insecure sexists leading to biased assumptions, and I don't understand why their mind refuses to consider the possibility that these people are correct.
Is it even surprising? Of course it's going to happen. Everyone is getting sued over this, and there is activism and PR wars everywhere. How do you think companies are going to respond? Nobody wants to be next, so they have to increase representation. Executives cannot actually do anything to increase representation, other than set goals for their employees to carry out. That is how execs manage. By the time it gets down to the rank-and-file, how to do it doesn't matter. They know it needs to get done, and nobody wants to be the reason that an exec's goals are not met, so they will just make it happen. This happens with goals all the time, and number of women hired is in no way different. Remember when Microsoft told shareholders they were going to get 1 billion devices running Windows 10, and what they started doing to forcefully upgrade machines? If the rank and file resort to force installing Windows to meet that goal, how do you think a company like MS are going to handle meeting their diversity targets? Or Wells Fargo with their account opening scandal that was motivated by executive goals for numbers of new accounts?
This sucks for everybody, but most of all for the people it's supposed to help. Now, those who did meet the bar look just like those who didn't meet the bar but were hired as tokens. Looking the same would not be an issue were it not for identity politics.