Most HR departments are staffed by women for example, they would be the ones that saw a "Mr." in the resume.
Do you see the irony in this statement?
But while looking, I instead found research that slightly contradicted my current understanding of the subject. They[1,2] claimed that there is no difference between female and male management in how they discriminate. They say that both genders are equally bad in creating equality in the work space (deciding hiring or pay rate).
So I still stand by that we need to change people rather than men, but thanks for pushing me to look for sources.
[1]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-...
[2]: http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2011/r-11-26-Paverkar-chefe... (Swedish)
But you are right - it’s not an exclusively male problem, and woman are perfectly capable of discriminating against other women, and do, frequently, and often unconsciously.
In the end society as a whole needs to change how it views women, and how it acts upon those views.
A problem might exist, but targeting the wrong target won't fix it, stop blaming the "higher ups" for decisions (conscious or not) taken by the ones that took those decisions.
I very much doubt there is a company where the CEO made a explicit rule for the HR don't hire any women.
But I can see your point, let's just assume it was the HR person that threw out the resume. And since we're in assumption land, let's assume the HR person was a woman.
Because men vastly outnumber women in executive and management positions in business, esp. in the highest levels of business/corporate hierarchy.
Of course, combating misogyny and patriarchy doesn't mean only men will have attitudes changed, but let's not pretend about the numbers of the situation.
This is the problem, not (only) men's attitudes. The most screwed up part is that this inequality often holds even in female dominated professions, like librarians and teachers. I'm into forcing companies to do things rather than waiting for the attitudes of millions to change, esp. when the effect of that attitude only increases the income and options of the people whose attitudes you are trying to change.
Institute quotas and penalize companies if they don't make them. In the beginning, companies may have to hire women that are less talented than the men that are available to them, but if the positions are there, women in general will up their games to compete with each other for them. It's basic economics.
Either way, HR didn't hate him because he was beautiful, and there are conceivable reasons why even a gender balanced HR department might screen out candidates posting their "beautiful" photos along with an applicatiom that don't involve petty jealously.
If photos are relatively rare in a culture receiving applications or the photos used are glamorous model applications, one could even argue that it's a reasonable alarm about a person's willingness to nakedly milk their looks. Even if that isn't the case, a non-partisan observer might [over]correct a perceived (and often real) tendency for beautiful people to receive more favourable treatment in some environments. Maybe they could apply the same criteria to tall men too...
