Disclosure of non binary pronouns leads to less favourable employer response

[HermioneWeasley]

It seems most employers have not embraced the TQ despite their corporate virtue signalling. Recruiting managers are giving the They/Thems a swerve.

https://x.com/caroartc/status/1752729073674027042?s=46&t=ujkdP8xmA6DNFeYFKmnldg

It's baffling but I think can be condensed quite neatly into 'needs to get a hobby'.

Employers want to know that you're qualified to do the job and that you'll do the job without causing them too much grief.

They don't GAF about your sexuality, gender, etc. keep it out of work!!

@SidewaysOtter Lavvy on a Sunday

I thought it was some strange perversion involving American muscle cars?

Who the hell wrote this?

Hemisexual refers to people who experience sexual attraction to one or more genders or sexes, but lack sexual attraction to one or more different genders or sexes. for example, one might be sexually attracted to women, but only experience sensual attraction to men.

What is "sensual attraction" exactly? How is it distinguished from sexual attraction or romantic attraction?

If I take the first sentence alone, then that suggests it's one of the new words used to communicate exclusive same-sex attraction or opposite-sex attraction, only in terms of gender identity.

For example, perhaps you might find yourself attracted to women (female), transmen (female), some maverique gender people (the female ones), agender people (the female ones) but never men.

In old money, a lesbian or a straight man.

Screenshots for those of us not on TwiX?

I used to be able to read some things as I have the app, but now I need a log in to read anything.

Carolina Arteaga: Disclosing nonbinary pronouns reduces positive employer response by 5.5pp, and this decline is larger in Republican communities. By eames taryn, our brilliant PhD student

There is also a penalty for just disclosing pronouns so: He/him, she/her of around 3.7pp.

Evidence from a large-scale audit study!

And yes, I added my pronouns to my profiles after reading this paper

This is the abstract of the paper:

Taryn versus Taryn (she/her) versus Taryn (they/them): A Field Experiment on Pronoun Disclosure and Hiring Discrimination

This repository stores current files associated with the above working paper by Taryn Eames, a PhD Candidate in economics at U of T

^Abstract: Thousands of randomly generated, fictitious resumes were submitted to job postings in pairs where the treatment resume contained pronouns listed below the name and the control resume did not. Two treatments were considered: nonbinary "they/them” and binary "he/him” or "she/her” pronouns congruent with implied sex. Results show that disclosing nonbinary pronouns reduces positive employer response by 5.4 to 5.5 percentage points; estimates are statistically significant and robust to the Heckman-Siegelman critique. There is suggestive evidence that discrimination is larger (approximately double) in Republican than Democratic geographies, potentially reflecting attitudinal differences. Applicants with multiple minority identities are doubly disadvantaged: for example, disclosing nonbinary pronouns while applying to a male-dominated occupation as a female reduces positive employer response by 10.9 to 11.8 percentage points relative to males who do not disclose pronouns. By comparison, there is limited evidence that disclosing binary pronouns reduces positive employer response.

TLDR: Employers don’t like employing pronoun people or employing women in male-dominated occupations.

Colour me surprised that potential employers might want to give a hard swerve to reality-denying gender believers who force others to engage in their religious rituals and beliefs.

The non-binary person in my workplace is a major PITA, and uses her special status to avoid being reprimanded for playing video games and not actually doing her job.

I don't think the management will be leaping to hire more of the same.

Bliddy hell! 😦

It IS a thing.

I don't understand the "definition", but it's a thing all right . . . 😬

I can't imagine how much of a PITA it would be to employ the nonbinary person I know from a leisure activity, he's constantly correcting people who say he instead of they (he doesn't "present" as anything but male), he has massive mood swings to the point where he is rude and won't talk to you and everyone tiptoes around him. He's always talking about himself. No way would I employ him.

Vinnie when you're feeling manly?

This one has me pondering. After learning the hard way that hiring lots of mini-mes is a disaster, i have always been really careful to build truly diverse teams. On paper, the team of mini mes would have ticked all the EDI boxes (prob one of the few teams in the org that did) but in practice it was a mess. Got stuff done, but high conflict, too much drama, and not particularly adaptable. When talking about diversity at work I am always very careful to emphasise diversity of thought and experience alongside diversity of personal characteristics.

I have never interviewed an enbie for a role but have worked with quite a few and have been pondering how I might respond. Part of me is thinking, in my experience in work, enbies are without exception attention-seeking trouble-making nightmares, but this view is formed from only a handful of data points and assuming this applies to all enbies is just out right prejudice. (I have the same issues with Lucys, all of them i have ever met in work have been total mares, but doesnt mean they all are)

What worries me most is the impact on existing team members. I have several ND people on my team, one has autism and I strongly suspect is gender critical and i worry could struggle to use preferred pronouns. She would certainly have some views on the logic of being non-binary, which she would be happy to share (she is an amazing bull shit detector, she sees through fancy language and slick presentations to uncover flws in any argument) , but i doubt she would appreciate the risk that doing this might create for her.

Bringing an enbie into my team feels really risky. How do you balance the rights and needs of one protected characteristic (disability) with another i think totally non protected characteristic (do enbies have any legal protection, i know SW have them in the trans umbrella, but that dont mean shit legally). I don't think any HR department in the country has gotten their head around this, and i have no desire to be a test case. So, unless they were the only appointable candidate, i would swerve.

When I see it on email profiles that aren’t public sectors I have begun to assume they are usually difficult to work with, just through experience

I’m involved with a v small independent business. Saw the pronouns on an application but put concerns to one side and hired them. On their very first day they complained about the sex based toilets. Then after spending time and money training them, they blithely left. Frustrating.

I don't support discrimination, on protected characteristics or otherwise. Or making sweeping judgements about groups of people.

Being self-obsessed as a non-binary person isn't a bug, it's a feature. I don't think you can call yourself non-binary unless you think you're rather special in that you don't think sex-based stereotypes apply to you. If you think you are special in that, don't see how other people can object to them yet remain the sex that they are, then you're spectacularly unempathetic and narcissistic. Who wants to work with someone like that?
BTW loved your post @Poinsettiasarevile, you sound like a great team leader. Diversity of thought is a much better thing to look for in building a team - Matthew Syeds book explains this brilliantly.

I wonder what effect putting your star sign in a prominent place on your CV would be. Or writing "May Jesus be with you" in the cover letter. I wouldn't ever want to discriminate against people who were Christians or who believed in astrology or wicca or whatever. But to be honest I would look askance at both of the above examples (whereas I wouldn't if it was mentioned in a way that was relevant to the job. e.g. past experience involved managing a Christian youth camp or something. But if someone went out of their way to write Margaret Kemp DEVOUT CHRISTIAN I would be hmmm

But then I suppose it might work as a signal to someone that was actively looking to hire someone with those beliefs.

Nice, but lacking critical thinking...

Pronouns are not protected characteristics. Everyone has pronouns!

Yes, it's not the possessing of a certain belief system, it's the need to share it and implied in the 'instructive' use of pronouns, the demand/expectation that others must pay lip service to it, too. The equivalent would be a religious believer identifying themself on the application as such and asking you to address them as 'Lama' 'Reverend' 'Holiness' etc.

Most people will use 'Lama' 'Reverend' 'Holiness' out of politeness if asked. The issue is the expectation. I also question whether when these titles are entirely self identified they have any meaning? Usually a priest/officiant has to have some form of structure/process behind having that title bestowed, I think?

I like to think myself open and accepting (plus I have a child who IDs as trans) so I know I think about these issues more than most.

I cannot see any positive reason for announcing one's pronouns whether they are obvious (she/her for someone with a female name) or unusual. Even the kindest explanation I can come up with involves some kind of performative nonsense (check me out I'm super-woke and on the ball). At the more cynical end it just screams "I'm an attention seeker who will require very special treatment". Neither of these feel like a win in an employment context.

My main beef with all this nonsense is the blind acceptance of something as progressive and good when a modicum of analysis and thought reveals its nothing of the sort and actually quite damaging in many ways.