I see people attacking him in general terms, calling him a bigot/sexist/etc, but they never mention anything specific he wrote.
Can anyone point to anything specific that is upsetting so many people?
https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/note-employees-ceo-...
I don't know, I read the article and it seem to me his point was pretty clear that men and women have biological differences that make them drawn to different types of work, and to find enjoyment in different things.
I actually found his point in saying we should increase cooperative work (such as pair programming) to make it more desirable rather refreshing. I also am drawn to people and would find more enjoyment in more cooperative work.
He also implied that women who get into google are there because the bar is lowered. This implication means when he sees a female coworker, he automatically assumes they're less "effective" than a male co-worker and they're only there because the standards were lowered for them. Essentially this makes the workplace hostile. If you're a woman, you know that this guy thinks "less" of you because of the way you were born. He basically put into words his implicit and explicit biases towards women.
You don't need to have any specific valid reason to be offended unfortunately.
> Can anyone point to anything specific that is upsetting so many people?
Also being offended is quite contagious also.
Despite the attempts to provide disclaimers, many of the comments he wrote were explicitly sexist. For example the sections "Personality differences" and "Men's higher drive for status".
Sexism means prejudice related to gender. Prejudice means pre-judging a group. For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
And other comments. In the context of discussion of things like hiring, promotion and pay, acting on the beliefs he stated has been outlawed (even though unfortunately these biases are still very prevalent). If they do not fire him, the document will be used as evidence in discriminatory lawsuits.
These sexist beliefs are still just as popular as ageist and racist beliefs. Many may be able to find scientific studies that back up their prejudice. There are usually studies backing up just about any view, just due to the nature of science. Regardless of how well accepted or not these studies are, the laws have already been made years before. So if you want these types of prejudicial beliefs to be openly consulted in hiring, promotion, etc. decisions in companies, those laws will need to be changed.
Would it be a prejudice to say women on average are less tall than men? Where do you draw the line between "pre-judgement" and "statistics" (can we call it post-judgement?). Height is OK but work drive is not OK to post-judge?
Go ahead and bury my comments. Judges will eventually explain the laws to you people.
To reiterate, this says precisely nothing about the qualifications and competency of individuals who actually enter tech, it only speaks to the relative number of men and women we ought to expect our workforce to be composed of. It could be that the natural result of equal opportunity for all men and women to enter tech is for there to be more than 50% men, possibly quite a bit more. Again, there is a lot of research that indicates this (for citations, see the "manifesto").
For various reasons I don't want to go into on this thread, Iran is not a society that I think should be looked up to and emulated. It frequently gets cited as an example of highly misogynistic culture, and as far as I know has plenty of laws / official practices that codify inequality of women in a way that many other developed countries (e.g., the United States, countries in the EU, etc) don't. I'm happy to be corrected on this as I really don't know all that much about Iran, but I strongly suspect the people decrying the google essay as being sexist would agree that Iran is not a good role model for egalitarian society. Regardless, from what little I do know, if the structure of Iranian society/culture is what it takes to get high representation of women in STEM, is that really worth it?
I have one more thing to add - I found this video to be thought provoking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70&t=300
(I've linked to a specific time where the material is particularly relevant, but the whole thing is worth a watch)
To summarize, that video makes the observation that less wealthy, less egalitarian countries have higher rates of women in typically male professions. Conversely, very rich and egalitarian countries have a lower amount of women in them. The explanation for this phenomenon that is proposed in the video (if I remember right, I watched this years ago) is that when factors like wages, status, family expectations, etc are given less and less importance, and people are therefore relatively more free to choose professions based on desire rather than need, women tend to avoid jobs within STEM fields. To be clear, that's merely one interpretation of the data (although it sounds plausible to me), there are likely other valid ones.
Which brings doubt into, if we're raising boys and girls without considering gender norms would boys really outnumber girls in tech?
Personally, I think it's very likely that if a large number of men and a large number of women were each given exactly equal opportunity to pursue whatever career they wished, more men would pursue tech than women. I haven't seen any data that contradicts this belief, but if I did I'd like to think I would change my mind. Of course, I have no idea what range we should expect the proportions to fall into. 51/49? 60/40? 90/10? Obviously this also means that I have no idea if the gender representation we see in tech currently accurately represents the population of people who would be interested in it, given the opportunity. But I think the weight of the evidence that we should expect more men than women in tech is much higher than the weight to the contrary. Not knowing the exact numbers simply means that we should focus our efforts on making sure everybody has equal opportunity to pursue whichever career interests them the most, as opposed to trying to reach some arbitrary numerical threshold. As long as all people are free to make their own choices, we shouldn't be concerned how the distributions turn out.
That's because in iran, the government sets the "standards for women's and men's study". Women are FORCED to take these classes.
Also, iranian women outnumber men in STEM within iran because iranian families with money send their male children overseas to study.
The numbers are even more skewed for UAE, Kuwait, etc. There, the women are like 80% of the local university populations because the wealthy arabs send their sons to study abroad in US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.
There are political scientists/psychologists who say that the lack is choice is why women in iran and middle east are so well represented in STEM. In the west, females have lots of choices and they have a say in what they study. The government/fathers can't tell women you have to study this or that. That's not the case in iran. If iran ever opened up and liberalized, the thinking is that a large portion of the women will choose non-STEM fields, just like they do in the West.
In short, why do they study stem? They study STEM subjects for the same reason they wear burqas. They have no choice.
The number of Iranians in Iran vastly outnumber the ones studying outside of Iran. Especially in undergrad.
Please give me sources that Iranian women are forced to study STEM.
My source is I've lived in Iran nearly most of my life.
I would love some examples of your accusation. You say it's the "definition of sexism". So you must have plenty of examples from his writing.
> and a perfect example of why we still need diversity laws and programs.
Yes. The fact the guy got fired for having his own opinions proves that we are in a dire need for diversity of thought and ideas.
> For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.
But that's societal/evolutionary theory proposed by some scientists/thinkers? Also, the belief that women can't compete with men physically is used as an excuse to created women's tennis assocation, WNBA, women's hockey, women's soccer, etc? Is that sexist? There is sexism and there is biological facts/inquiry/etc.
He was just offering a possible explanation for why more men are in leadership roles.
"The greater tendency for men to be interested in having a higher status fits with a long line of biological research dating back to Darwin. It seems men believe that higher status brings the mating opportunities that come with being top dog."
https://phys.org/news/2012-12-women-money-men-status.html
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/evolution/9005552/Me...
It's almost as if humans were evolutionarily driven to be this way. Is science and discussing scientific topics now bigotry?
If that's why people are upset and if that's why he got fired, then google is going to lose and he's going to be wealthy.