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Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Having lived and worked in both The Netherlands and Britain, I’ve seen actual American-style quotas systems in Britain that explicitly priviledged a specific gender (rather than what you describe, which is a system mean to remove any and all discrimination), and the result was pretty bad, both because the worst professionals around were from that gender and clearly only got the job due to quotas and at the same time competent professionals that happen to have that gender were not taken as seriously and were kinda second class citizens.

In fact, that specific place which is the only one I ever worked with and American style quota system was the most sexist place I ever worked in, in my entire career (which spans over 2 decades) - people would not say sexist things, all the while they would definitelly have different competence expectations and even levels of how seriously they took people as professionals depending on people’s gender.

Interestingly, IT in The Netherlands was way less sexist in a natural way than almost all places I worked in Britain, with almost always more well balanced gender-wise teams and were - at least that I noticed - nobody assuming anything in professional terms based on people’s gender or sexual orientation.

Frankly one of the things I really missed after I move to Britain from The Netherlands was exactly the “that’s about as relevant as eye color” when it came to people’s gender or sexual orientation in the work place that the Dutch generally show (at least in my area).

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Senal@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Having lived and worked in both The Netherlands and Britain, I’ve seen actual American-style quotas systems in Britain that explicitly priviledged a specific gender (rather than what you describe, which is a system meant to remove any and all discrimination, even if subconscious), and the result was pretty bad, both because the worst professionals around there were from that gender and clearly only got the job due to quotas and at the same time competent professionals that happen to have that gender were not taken as seriously and were kinda second class professionals even though they did not at all deserve it.

Again with this, the systems aren’t design to remove discrimination, they are design to counteract the discrimination that already exists.

The difference between equality vs equity.

Though bullshit hires based solely on quota’s do exist, I’m not pretending that doesn’t happen.

In fact, that specific place, which is the only one I ever worked in with an American style quota system, was the most sexist place I ever worked in, in my entire career (which spans over 2 decades) - people would not say sexist things (lest HR punish them), all the while they would definitelly have different competence expectations and even levels of how seriously they took people as professionals depending on people’s gender. Meanwhile the people that got in via quotas tended to be the kind that would play the system rather than do the job, which often made the whole environment even more sexist.

Those quota systems aren’t specifically American, but they have certainly gone all-out in recent times.

Sounds like a bad workplace, implementing processes badly. Is that a reflection on the idea as a whole ?

Interestingly, IT in The Netherlands was way less sexist in a natural way than almost all places I worked in Britain, with almost always more well balanced gender-wise teams and were - at least that I noticed - nobody assuming anything in professional terms based on people’s gender or sexual orientation.

As i said in my other reply, because the Netherlands is better at this in general. It’s not better because it doesn’t have the same systems, it’s better because it doesn’t need them in the same way(or at all).

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