Workplace gender discrimination!
In a society that is constantly pushing for complete equality among the population, workplace discrimination is one of the first issues that needs to go. Although it is illegal to intentionally discriminate against someone based on their sex, race, or religion, there is still an inherent unconscious bias that exists in most countries. An article in The Economist discusses the advantages and disadvantages to anonymizing job applications to ensure that there is no bias in hiring an employee.
Although the idea seems great in theory, it is not quite as effective as one might think. A lot of information on a resume can potentially give away things like sex and nationality without indirectly stating them. In fact, this article states that an experiment done in France was not particularly successful because of the information that suggested certain information about the candidates. The article states that anonymizing applications may be a start, but is only a small step towards ending hiring bias, and I’d have to agree. While in principle it seems as though this would eliminate the potential for many subconscious biases, there are still many remaining factors that need to be considered. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with an alternate way to avoid bias, but was unable to come up with anything concrete. The reality is that we can anonymize everything, but at some point we need to change our mindset altogether if we want to see the end of this phenomenon.
Sources:
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21677214-anonymising-job-applications-eliminate-discrimination-not-easy-no-names-no-bias