Nope. But the original memo defends discrimination against women and makes recommendations for future discrimination. Implementing these suggestions would be literally illegal for Google (subject to EEOC), and in fact Google is already in a lawsuit defending their alleged discrimination.
> Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. - Defeatist. If society pushes men into leadership, then there's nothing we can or should do about it?
> Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths. - This defends putting women into less-desirable jobs because desirable ones are not really that desirable? This argument is self-defeating.
> I don’t think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need principles reasons for why it helps Google; - Discrimination is justified if it helps the bottom line.
> We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left ideology that can irreparably harm Google. - You're not allowed to believe that discrimination will hurt the bottom line. Even if senior management tells you so.
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate - The alternative is to increase the false positive rate for those candidates.
> Having representative viewpoints is important for those designing and testing our products, but the benefits are less clear for those more removed from UX. - Having representation is leadership is not important.
> Prioritize intention. - This is also illegal. Google is a government contractor and will be required to implement affirmative action policies if its employees are too different from the general population. That's because they're taking money from all taxpayers and redistributing it to or away from certain groups. Intention here is irrelevant.
I don't see any reference to discrimination against women in any of that. Could you possibly pick one of the points and explain to me how it is discriminatory against women?
I saw that, I just don't see anything advocating discriminating against women. Advocating to not discriminate for women is not the same thing as discriminating against women. I think for a lot of people this distinction doesn't matter.
> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
> 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).
Those comments in no way "defend discrimination against women".
Serious question: does your mind think they actually do? This might be a good illustration of why people differ so much on the same objective facts, the human brain automatically adds additional context (that isn't necessarily physically present) into perceptions.
We're reading the same document, but what you don't realize is your brain is adding additional context and information that is simply not in the document. Therefore, you are confused about what the author is saying.
Can you give me some indication that you understand what I'm talking about? You don't have to agree, just a sign that you know what I'm saying. I'm wondering if your brain maybe censors certain sorts of ideas, such that you effectively don't even "see" them.
> he doesn't outright say to discriminate, but he does imply it
The truth you are missing about the world is contained right within that statement. I recommend printing it out and hanging it on your wall as a reminder, and let your mind chew on it for a few months. Resist the urge to draw conclusions, just mull it over, you might be surprised.
Do you believe these comments defend discrimination against women? I'm trying to understand how one could see it that way. I see both of these statements as unquestionably true, and the sexism accusation as stifling the type of free expression needed for rational dialogue. If facts are sexist, then the definition of sexism being used is wrong.
It's subtle, but yes. These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people, there are some roles they might not be able to perform. A little further down he makes a similar claim that since women look more towards work life balance, technical and leadership roles may not seek out leadership roles as much as men. This can be used again to claim women don't belong in those roles. This is also bullshit, as I know several women who run a company and have a decent life.
Strip away his science and his words, he's a misogynistic techbro (I'm reminded of ESR) who wants to pretend technology is some sort of meritocracy and that a woman doesn't play well in that situation. Almost every one of his claims has a hanging but attached to it.
The author mentions many many times throughout his memo that these are 'average' observations and by no ways representative of the entire female population. The author did not say that all women are more interested in people, merely that there is a higher proportion in comparison to the male population.
The author suggests that when these average statistics propagate into life decisions and employment preferences, you end up with an equilibrium with less females in these roles.
You write 'This can be used again to claim women don't belong in those roles' but the author did not use this to claim such a thing! 'I know several women' precisely coincides with what the author wrote. Again, he pointed out multiple times throughout that he was not generalizing but was merely looking at average trends.
The author advocates for ending programs designed to get more females into technology and leadership positions because he views them as discrimination. His basis is precisely what you mentioned, that on average women are X. In his mind, the fact that men are more status oriented than women means that men will be disproportionately in leadership roles. That's "just the way it is" and we should accept it and create "separate but equal" opportunities (part time work in this case). It's not outright discrimination, but it's ignoring several other factors that cause women not to seek leadership positions. He's trying to use some very basic differences and ignoring a much broader picture.
So, you believe that equality ,in this context, is a reality only if the distribution of gender in corporate employees reflects more or less the distribution in general population?
> These 2 lines essentially state that as women are more interested in people
In the aggregate, this is objectively true based on my observations, and you can see this exact same sentiment passionately expressed by feminists.
> ...there are some roles they might not be able to perform.
This part is your mind playing tricks on you. You have certain beliefs, and you are trying to find anything to confirm them.
You have misunderstood what the author was saying, I would suggest because you are not trying to understand it, but rather are trying to find examples to substantiate your worldview.
There is no imagination, he might be citing scientific research, but this is no different that similar essays written by other technologists who don't agree with feminism and lean conservative and libertarian. ESR is a prime example, and this essay reminds me of his work. However,
>Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be
The line immediately before states that women tend to be more people-oriented than object-oriented. The line between these 2 states is crystal clear: women are more people oriented than men, and there are limits to how people oriented certain roles and the company can be, therefore, women will not have the same opportunities as men. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but his entire essay is for Google to stop programs aimed at gender inclusion.
> That's absurd. You're not even interpreting his comments at face value. You're attributing a subtext to them that only exists in your imagination.
Really? The first bullet point is "women are more people oriented". The second bullet point is that there are limits to how people oriented specific roles or even Google as a whole can be. If you want to take his words at face value, go ahead, but the belief that there are some roles than women cannot do due to their differences is consistent with the rest of his essay.
Logical thoughts?
"Women are X"
"There are limits to how well certain positions and Google can support X".
So, what exactly am I supposed to draw from this? You're insistent I am wrong, but you're offering no explanation as to why I am wrong. I don't disagree that women are more sociable than men. I disagree this means certain roles within the company cannot support that trait.
Further down:
"Women value work life balance"
"Men are status achievers"
"Because of that, men will appropriately be in leadership and technology roles, also women suffer anxiety more."
Side note, convenient he leaves out that women are statistically able to deal with stress better than men.
His conclusion is that rather than creating programs that encourage women to enter leadership positions, leave that to the men and give women access to part time roles.
If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
> You're insistent I am wrong, but you're offering no explanation as to why I am wrong.
The explanation was in my previous comment.
I will give you another hint: you are misinterpreting the meaning of "women" in your excerpted quotes.
> If you want to say I am wrong, so be it, disagreement is fine, but you have yet to counter anything I have said with an opposing understanding, just ad hominen attacks and criticism.
I don't think there's a way to reply that will satisfy you, there is a crucial part of objective perception that you are lacking.
> It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields.
It does no such thing, because:
(1) STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things
(2) While in some STEM fields gender disparities are apparent from fairly early in career progression, that's not true of all STEM fields; in some (many of them around biosciences) women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement (problematically for the “it's about men wanting to deal with things and women wanting to deal with people” explanation of STEM gender disparities, this leaves women dealing more with things while the men move to higher levels where they deal with people.)
>STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things
This doesn't negate my point.
You're correct that I oversimplified: some STEM fields are indeed less 'biologically geared' to men. But the principle remains: biologically established differences in interest can very plausibly explain the differences seen in gender representation in some STEM fields. It is the assertion of this fact that has invited unfounded accusations of sexism.
>women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement
That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.
> That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.
And, you'll note, I never claimed it did: I cited it as a fact about the gender imbalance in STEM which is not explainable by the facile “men like dealing with things while women like dealing with people” explanation which you described upthread as being, on its own, a refutation of the idea that gender imbalances in STEM are in any part due to systemic discrimination (which could only be true if it explained all aspects of STEM gender imbalance and left no room for systemic discrimination.)
Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.
>Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.
Yes that is a more accurate construction. For the sake of expedience I wasn't this precise, and left it to the reader to sauce out this more precise meaning, which given the format, I think was entirely reasonable.
You're correct, it is a hateful, sexist comment, and I won't take it back or apologize for it. The "angry white male stereotype" has been at the heart of programming for a long time; misogyny has been at the heart of programming for a long time. As eloquent and research based as this paper is, it's just another in that long line of thinking.
They could very plausibly explain the differences in the number of men who write software relative to women. The only explanation is absolutely not "systemic discrimination against women".
I know it's trendy to defend feminist talking points, but it ultimately leads to what we see now with the Google firing: a public conversation where facts take a secondary role to ideology/dogma.
Why could it plausibly explain the differences? Seems like a huge leap to me. Basically there is some evidence that men and women are different, on average, to some extent, at the neuropsychological level. There is no evidence linking sex-related neurological traits to being good at or enjoying writing software.
On the other hand, there is evidence that cultural biases specifically discourage women from entering, and push women out of, STEM careers.
It does not defend discrimination against women. That's absurd. Quote me a single section that "defends discrimination against women". Incredibly harmful false accusations like this seem to be par for the course anytime someone goes up against postmodernist/feminist dogma.
The lack of intellect and integrity displayed by the attacks on the fired Google employee is really disturbing.