In reply to David Martin:
A rebuttal to your rebuttal
- i have edited your mail significantly to keep the length acceptable. I tried to do so fairly - of course point out where you think I have not achieved that.
> "These are the main gender differences you cite"
> ...Damore doesn't actually do that. ...it would be problematic to swamp the data with the unnecessary. Damore... is highlighting some *specific* traits that may be more prevalent in females, and which on their own may lead to few women in the tech sector.
Damore's conclusion rests on the assumed fact that gender differences in tech are largely driven by different interests between men and women. He is assuming this is the case - if he didn't then his recommendations would make no sense. So it is fair to criticise him for selecting a very narrow set of gender differences.
I could say "women on average are shorter than men, meaning that weightlifting is easier for them as they have to lift weights a shorter distance". This would be absurd. Similarly, inoring the fact that many technical roles require a lot of interaction with people is a problem for Damore's argument.
> "And sixth, even if you are right that more men than women are well-suited to the job of software engineer at google, you are wrong that taking steps to recruit more women is inherently unfair to men."
> Is he wrong? Based on possessing an organ that hangs between my legs, if I screw up my job interview at Google that is my career at Google over. Whereas those allowed to tick the other box are granted a second opportunity?
The Economist's argument is that it is already harder to get a job in tech if you are a women. (There is a great study showing that women's code is more likely to be accepted on the software development forum Github.... but only if the fact that they are a woman is hidden.) so Googles hiring measures are actually levelling the playing field.
> "There is plenty of evidence that women in Silicon Valley suffer harassment and discrimination." Maybe true. Possibly even a result of the imbalance in numbers. ... it felt more like the female employees on average displayed different traits than the males and as they were more numerous they, inadvertently dominated the discourse of what was acceptable behavior.
Examples of sexism, harrassment and discrimination in tech, just off the top of my head:
Github example (see above)
Team building activities ending up in strip bars / brothels (see Uber for an example but it is common)
Dave McClure (a VC) propositioning and forcing himself on female founders
It is very hard to claim that these are just examples of one group of people being dominant. I'll admit that, at least in the case of the VC, there is no evidence that it is systemic. Although it certainly isn't a single, isolated case.
If, ofr the sake of argument, we follow your logic and assume that it is not sexism, merely the behaviour of men when they are in the largest group, how does that change the overall argument that it is harder for women to get into tech? It doesn't. In fact it would seem to argue more strongly for positive discrimination .
> "Many of the problems in our industry are caused by the sorts of misconceptions about the work that you clearly hold. " would be accurate if it wasn't for the fact that Damore suggests ways to get more women, and more diversity in general, in to Google.
Technology jobs already involve a lot of interaction between people. I would certainly assume - based on working for a software company - that well over 20% of tech jobs involve a lot of interaction with people. So his analysis of what a tech job is seems wrong.
I have a separate problem with his recommendations: he spends as much space - if not more - hedging his recommendations than he does making them :
Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration.
Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
Women on average are more cooperative
Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there’s more we can do.
This doesn’t mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn’t necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what’s been done in education.
Women on average are more prone to anxiety. Make tech and leadership less stressful.
Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.
Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average
Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work though can keep more women in tech.
The male gender role is currently inflexible
Feminism has made great progress in freeing women from the female gender role, but men are still very much tied to the male gender role.
If we, as a society, allow men to be more “feminine,” then the gender gap will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles.
> "When you first wondered why so few of our software engineers were women, and why we’re trying to hire more and whether that was fair, there were plenty of smart things you could have done. You could have asked some of your female colleagues about their experiences in the industry. You could have looked for evidence that conflicted with your biases "
That's exactly what Damore claimed to be doing. He produced a document that he acknowledged might be wrong, and put it out there for people to point out where.
An honest - or at best unclumsy - attempt to understand the experience of women in the tech industry wouldn't have started out claiming that women aren't suited for leadership because they are more neurotic. Whatever the truth of the statement it is clearly not going to elicit an open answer.
> Thankfully, their authors can publish them and we can debate them. Something we are all better off for, regardless of whether they offend, conflict or stereotype. The freedom to do so being the nub of this whole issue.
The irony of this is that much of the world is now having a very open discussion of the issues raised by Damore's memo - and indeed his voice on the issue has beem magnified enormously. Think this whole case doesn't show that freedom of speech is dead. Quite the opposite, it is alive and well. What it shows, though, is that if you raise such a clearly sensitive issue in such a clearly insensitive way on a company forum you will get the sack... but if you work for a household name your global profile will be raised immeasurably.