To be honest, my gut reaction to the gender decoder was that it is itself sexist, because it promotes sexist stereotypes.
However, the negative effects are probably pretty distributed across society generally and hard to measure, while the potential benefits from more actual diversity (in EA or generally) could outweigh them. It’s plausible that it actually on net reduces gender stereotyping by increasing the visibility of women in stereotypically male roles and men in stereotypically female roles. I really don’t know, though.
EDIT: I’m so sorry, I’ve contributed to turning this into a debate. facepalm
I think these are all valid points, and yeah the words are just stereotypes. Worth using caution with these sorts of simplistic decoders (but I still think they’re somewhat helpful). I think you could probably pay for a better one but I doubt that’s worth the money.
We did also ask people of different genders to review the ad before putting it out, and I definitely think that was worth the time cost.
To be honest, my gut reaction to the gender decoder was that it is itself sexist, because it promotes sexist stereotypes.
However, the negative effects are probably pretty distributed across society generally and hard to measure, while the potential benefits from more actual diversity (in EA or generally) could outweigh them. It’s plausible that it actually on net reduces gender stereotyping by increasing the visibility of women in stereotypically male roles and men in stereotypically female roles. I really don’t know, though.
Thanks. :P
I think these are all valid points, and yeah the words are just stereotypes. Worth using caution with these sorts of simplistic decoders (but I still think they’re somewhat helpful). I think you could probably pay for a better one but I doubt that’s worth the money.
We did also ask people of different genders to review the ad before putting it out, and I definitely think that was worth the time cost.