I am seeing more and more end games of anti-discrimination cropping up. Poor folk who have not had any barriers or boundaries placed on their lives and are ending up in situations to which they are not suited.
Its interesting to ask the question, is the situation not suitable for the candidate or is the candidate not suitable for the situation?
I have always ascribed to the idea that people have to change to suite the environment. But its always good to challenge an idea to see if its a rule or a heuristic. Are there sufficient edge cases to re-evaluate the rule?
So the instance I ran across today was about a woman who wanted to sue the US Navy because she could not get what she wanted. The details are sad and not worth repeating... but the essence is that the environment (the Navy) would not give the woman what she wanted... for reasons.
The issue I identified was that the Navy was not able to exercise judgment (for right or wrong) and reject her application... and the woman had been strung along and waffled around for so long that she had now passed an age cuttoff. Imagine a system as large as the US Navy and the only boundary they have left is age. All their other discrimination mechanisms have been systematically removed.
This means that the organisation cannot effectively make a decision and enforce it directly. The system has now adopted what always happens and has evolved indirect ways of trying to get an efficient result.
There is plenty of scope to argue about need to change and was the previous discrimination system fit for purpose... but that's not the point. The point is that without a discrimination system, the system has become frustrating, abusive, manipulative, untrustworthy and inefficient.
Its interesting that even as poor a candidate as she is for the role she wants (elite forces officer) the system has spent a lot of effort to prevent her getting in. It would have been very simple to play the strategy of "just her have a go and fail by herself". So was this because they did not have faith that she could be failed by any of the internal systems? Were they just protecting her? (Seem unlikely) Were they protecting the system/institution? (More likely... as all organisations have some self protection) or were there other considerations?
The problem is that this woman may not have failed most of the physical challenges and the remaining ones she might have received a "wave through" as has happened for various reasons in military fitness standards. This would have resulted in her getting the role she wanted.
So the question still is... where they right to discriminate against her for organisational reasons... even while they did it indirectly? Did the recruiting personnel have good insight into the role and used their instinct to keep her out?
Having just re-watched moneyball... it makes some interesting points about "selection personnel" that are probably exactly as valid for the military. However, in moneyball, they were not selecting from a general population, they were selecting from already elite players who had "issues". Very very carefully selecting around the issues.
In this instance they had a civilian who had "self-selected" as being an elite candidate and was trying to force their selection. Is this the same or different? Is there enough wiggle room between the two positions?
An alternate hypothesis is that the system rejected her (by indirect methods) because of other factors that are not being reported clearly. My personal take is that the candidate is demonstrating what is called in America a "Type A" personality.... an egomaniac bully. Perhaps they don't actually want candidates with these personality disorders in positions of extreme responsibility? Just a thought.
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