The myth of the double blind

<p>Although the double blind assessment of people, i.e. that both the person applying and the person judging don't know who the other is, seems like a good idea, it does not necessarily point to a solution of the problem of people not playing in a level field<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1">1</a></sup>. </p> <p>Although the story of musicians in the New York Philarmonic are a paradigmatic example of how the double blind (performers were behind a curtain) helped women get into the orchestra bypassing the bias of the judges, the same is hard to see elsewhere, such as in tech (see: <a class="wikilink" href="/gender_diversity_in_tech/">gender diversity in tech</a>), or academia (see: <a class="wikilink" href="/gender_diversity_in_academia/">gender diversity in academia</a>). </p> <p>The core of the problem is the metric used to judge, if the metric favors men, then the double blind will only exacerbate the problem, since it will make it <em>more valid</em>. If women are given tasks of lower scientific value through their careers (such as teaching or taking care of other things in the lab), at the moment of judging who deserves a promotion they'll be at a loss. Without even considering <a class="wikilink" href="/how_much_unpaid_work_is_done_by_women/">how much unpaid work is done by women</a>. </p> <div class="footnote"> <hr /> <ol> <li id="fn:1"> <p><a class="wikilink" href="/invisible_women_-_caroline_criado_perez/">Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez</a>, chapter 4&#160;<a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">&#8617;</a></p> </li> </ol> </div>