> women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering
Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? I've read his memo and just about every news article says it contains claims that it doesn't. I have no view on whether he's right or not, but I remain shocked at the misrepresentation of his views throughout the tech media.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
Edit: ebbv beat me to it
(a) There is no consistent world view for tens of millions of people distributed across the globe, (b) there is no research, none, that specifically states that women are genetically predisposed to be less suited to engineering and (c) there is no clear rules about what aspects of our biology are required to be a great engineer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/
Maybe these studies are wrong, maybe the conclusions Damore drew were wrong (I certainly think they are). However, I think witch-hunting people for asking questions about sensitive topics is a much more clear and present danger.
Nobody is arguing that men and women aren't biologically different. Of course they are. The point is whether those biological differences significantly affect your ability to be a professional engineer.
And you or Damore have provided zero evidence of this.
To rephrase what I'm talking about: some studies say women are less good at spatial reasoning than men -- maybe you can make an argument that Task X requires spatial reasoning skills. Assuming that argument is true it would stand to reason that statistically more men are capable of doing Task X than women. That's a far cry from saying women lack the ability to do Task X.
To refrain, I think Damore's conclusions are probably wrong. However I think there's a shocking abundance of willful ignorance whenever this topic gets raised.
You speak of willful ignorance, yet talk of studies you don't even link nor explain why they have anything to do with this. Why would this study about spatial reasoning by more important than e.g. SAT scores? How does that actually relate to women becoming engineers when there is no shortage of women who are capable of completing a CS degree?
You also seem to suggest that Damore's voice is important because other people aren't talking about this. As well as that people who disagree with him doesn't do so legitimately but because they don't like his opinions. That people don't talk about this isn't true, they just don't reach the same conclusions. Here is one example from the summery of the study "The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics":
"We conclude that early experience, biological factors, educational policy, and cultural context affect the number of women and men who pursue advanced study in science and math and that these effects add and interact in complex ways. There are no single or simple answers to the complex questions about sex differences in science and mathematics."
So why doesn't Damore, or yourself, mention a study like this that can be easily be found online?
No body is arguing against the right of women to become engineers. It's just stating that the assumption that "hidden bias" exists if a field is not at 50/50 is untrue. and by the way, I'm yet to find any proof for that. if you find a study that indicates no discirimination leads to 50/50 in all fields or at least in engineering I will be happy to read it.
So, to me this reads as bias. When I read his claim, I don't see it as implying that women are in any way less capable of becoming professional engineers, but (in context to his other assertions) that they are less likely to desire becoming a professional engineer.
Equally valid is having is that having to work with socially inept people reduces the appeal.
I'll freely offer that nothing in his paper affirms my interpretation of his view any more than yours, but if the only difference is that I'm more willing to assume good faith where you are not, then perhaps that's reason enough to not demand that he be insta-fired from any job he ever get, as many are asking to happen.
Some state that this a culture problem and that there is a hidden bias.
Some also state that women might go to other fields because they have a greater capacity at empathy. which is a proven fact. women that go and study those fields won't apply to cs positions they will apply to positions in their fields.
and by the way there was a study that indicated that women get short-listed less in sex-blind hiring
"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview."
"Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
this is getting downvoted with no replies if someone has a porblem with what I said, I'm happy to debate.
Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other.
...No it doesn't. That's just something you're adding to preserve the distinction.
>Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other.
Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability.
Whether or not the representation gap is biological is an important factual matter that should be discussed on the merits. It'd do women no good to try to get their best sprint times up to men's by fixing society to be more accepting of female sprinters. There are real biological differences between the sexes, and trying to fix downstream effects of them by making up sociological causes and attacking them is very quixotic.
I think a sociological explanation for any biological phenomena has to be made up. This is why we need to have an honest discussion about the merits of biological explanations, so that we can figure out the root causes and spend our efforts effectively.
He also suggested that if the goal is for Google to become more inclusive toward women, that perhaps the roles should be adjusted to appeal more to women than to stick our heads in the sand and pretend the problem is Google's patriarchy.
If you run a burger place and want more women to eat there, you start serving salads. That doesn't mean you're a sexist for thinking women can't eat burgers. Some do. But generally speaking, women eat salads at higher rates than men. You will not be as successful by trying to market the same burgers to women.
You're sneaking in your "prefer" with your "generally". Damore didn't speak just to preference, he also spoke to ability.
>If you run a burger place and want more women to eat there, you start serving salads. That doesn't mean you're a sexist for thinking women can't eat burgers. Some do. But generally speaking, women eat salads at higher rates than men. You will not be as successful by trying to market the same burgers to women.
Great analogy. So in terms of burgers/salads & men/women Damore is saying that there are biological reasons to believe that women prefer salads to burgers and that there are biological reasons to believe that men are better at eating burgers.
So now let me ask you, do you think women prefer salads because of biology, or do you think that women prefer salads because of culture? You can say both but if so maybe you could say which one you think is the larger influence and by how much.
Also, do you think that men are biologically better at eating burgers? Is this the reason they are more likely to order a burger?
I think the analogy exposes exactly the problem with Damore's memo.
Ability follows as a result of preference. I am a terrible architect because I chose to become a software engineer. That does not mean that if I had chosen to become an architect, I would be terrible at it. If most of the people from my hometown made the same choice, then most of us would be less good at architecting due to that preference.
> So now let me ask you, do you think women prefer salads because of biology, or do you think that women prefer salads because of culture? You can say both but if so maybe you could say which one you think is the larger influence and by how much.
Personally I think it's almost entirely culture. I couldn't say how much is what, but it makes no difference. The point is that it undermines the incumbent narrative, which is that sexism and oppression are the only significant causes.
> Also, do you think that men are biologically better at eating burgers? Is this the reason they are more likely to order a burger?
No, but I do think if you're running a burger place and refuse to acknowledge the possibility that different groups of customers prefer different things, you're going to be out of business soon. Fortunately restaurant menu choices haven't been politically charged--yet.
See everyone I talk to about Damore only tries to defend the preference portion. This isn't the only argument Damore is making. He believes abilities, not just preferences, are distributed differently between men and women. That's what I'm asking you to defend.
>Personally I think it's almost entirely culture. I couldn't say how much is what, but it makes no difference. The point is that it undermines the incumbent narrative, which is that sexism and oppression are the only significant causes.
It doesn't really undermine anything. When we move to salads it's super obvious that almost all of the effect is cultural not biological. So some burger stores start an initiative to get women to worry less about the cultural expectations placed on them and eat a damn burger but disgruntled Wendy's employee Damore writes an internal 10 page memo explaining that women don't eat burgers because they are biologically predisposed to salads. He digs up research about the vitamins and minerals contained in leafy greens, spends a ton of time tip-toeing around what he means to say, and couches everything in "distributional" language. At the end of the day it's obvious that this memo by a layman about why women prefer salads biologically is (1) ridiculous on it's face (2) not scientific and (3) actively harmful to his employer's goals.
But put that way it's obvious why he was fired and Damore looks less like a free-speech hero and more like bigoted faux-science dweeb.
> are distributed differently between men and women.
And that, as far as I know, is the current scientific consensus.
In particular, women who excel at the Math SATs tend to also excel at the Verbal SATs. Whereas men who excel at the Math SATs tend to only excel at the Math SATs.
And people, regardless of gender, who have both capabilities tend to go into non-STEM fields.
See https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/wh...
https://herosports.com/nfl/women-fastest-growing-market-foot...
wow, a decade of marketing overpowered millenia of biology ad cultural history.
No, it doesn't. It suggests fewer women are good. It doesn't suggest that the women in the field are any worse than the men in the field, it just explains why there may be fewer women than men.
I know I am.
this argument uses "Distribution of...abilities" without indicating in any part that women are worse at anything.
the phrase “Distribution of...abilities” does not suggest that “women are worse.”
"fewer women wind up having the skills for X in part due to biological causes" and "women are worse at X".
source:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19476221
from the abstract: "This study contributes information on women's greater empathic disposition in comparison with men by means of a longitudinal design in an adolescent population"
there is also this study: "Testosterone may reduce empathy by reducing brain connectivity" http://www.psypost.org/2016/03/testosterone-may-reduce-empat...
"Half of the women were given an orally administered dose of testosterone sufficient to increase the levels of the hormone in their blood by a factor of ten, while the other half received a placebo. The women who were given testosterone subsequently took significantly longer to identify the emotions depicted images of eyes, and made significantly more errors while doing so."
"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 at 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."
This is different than my point. I'm saying that software engineering IS people-oriented as it exists and that it's simply undervalued.
> Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be
What roles at Google shouldn't be people-oriented? This just strikes me as an absurd thing to say.
So no, I would say the original quote is not a good summary of the quote you quoted.
As for the distibution of preferences based on sex. While some might claim that sex does not affect preferences. A Meta-study found robust sex differences in children’s toy Indicating that sex "might" be a factor in deciding factor. The categorical refusal of this claim to the point the mere fact of suggesting that it "might" be true let alone asserting it is taboo, is scientifically unfounded.
source: Study finds robust sex differences in children’s toy preferences across a range of ages and countries http://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-differ...
People barely have any idea about how to hire a software engineer, much less judge someone's true "ability".
Preferences are also very complicated. People may prefer things very differently given the environment. That quote, along with many others, demonstrates the absolute lack of genuineness on the part of Damore.
Damore throws away any pretense of being objective/scientific when he makes claims like this based on metrics that are hardly measurable. A decent scientist would recognize that making claims with very serious implications like this is greatly irresponsible.
I'm not sure how you get from (1) his logic seems flawed, to (2) he's being disingenuous. Can you please elaborate?
2) He has an preconceived theory of how "ability" and "preference" work. The science does not point to his conclusions, because the science cannot point to any conclusions: ability is simply not scientifically understood or defined at all in the software engineering field, and preferences are barely understood and have many weird consequences (Dan Ariely's work is a great example of this). He is being disingenuous because he is making a claim without any ability to back it up, simply because it fits with his preconceived theory. That's disingenuous. If he were to say, "It seems to me that", or "What I've seen in my life is...", instead of making a strict claim. A strict claim requires actual evidence and well defined terms, both of which he has none.
Hmm...as to preferences, there are two easy tests:
1. You ask people
When you do, you find that people generally don't like CS. People in developed countries less than in less developed countries. And women less than men, with the gap becoming bigger in more developed countries. And girls less than boys, with the gap becoming larger in more developed countries.
You can also ask them why they choose that way, and in less developed or less prosperous countries, more people say "because of the money". In more prosperous countries, people are, well, more prosperous, so money is less of an issue.
2. You look at how people choose
Same pattern. It's not as if women are forced out of computing and into early childhood education. They choose to go there because, apparently, that is what they want to do.
I think many women have preferences that steer them away from engineering, this may be societal or genetic in nature but that's something that is being debated at this point.
I think saying his use of the word abilities is what gets him in a lot of trouble here.
Because this creates controversy, controversy creates engagement and engagement brings more ad revenue to the news outlets.
"Misunderstanding statistical distribution" https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...
He suggested that on average men are biologically more suited to programming, and the contention of his opponents is that that is still a problematic and inappropriate thing to say.
Stating "members from group X are better than members from group y" (which is how Damore's opponents describe his claim) is a not the same as stating that “more people from group X than from group Y might be suitable for this job”. The first is qualitative, the latter quantitative. The latter also implies that members of group y can be as good.
I am sure everyone has experienced how sentences and context radically can change through the addition or omission of just one or two words. Here we have such a case, and it should be acknowledged.
But the problem is that it isn't any more quantitative because it still depends on the highly subjective notion of what it means to be "suitable for this job" and assumes that there is only one way to be "suitable."
This is different from discriminatory hiring of women to be forced into a male oriented role. This is a substantive claim, which he accuses Google of doing. Discriminatory hiring is illegal, and also stupid, from a free market standpoint.
Tldr: If women aren't buying your product (not applying to Google), it's not the fault of women, its your product that needs to change to suit their wants and needs.
This is only sexist if you think men and women don't, as a general statistical rule, tend toward different interests along a bimodal distribution. But they do.
"James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired in August after posting a memo to an internal Google message board that was perceived by many to argue that women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering"
They can also point out that he denied he argued this, and that there is plenty of disagreement over whether his memo said it or not.
I know plenty of folks are saying they read it and don't see how one can interpret it any other way. But the fact that you get so many comments indicating they did not interpret it that way is a strong indicator of a lack of consensus. The way the article is written implies a certainty, and does not reflect the reality around the memo.
Essentially, to insist that this is what Damore meant, based only on his memo, is insisting that a huge number of HN posters are playing the same game Damore is. It's much easier to believe that there are other valid interpretations of the memo and to allow for the possibility that Damore had one of the other interpretations.
He was fired for a reason.
This is the heart of the lawsuit.
Unless you mean he was fired as part of a witch hunt which was much ado about nothing, and that's a sad fact of basing firing decisions on tweets. That is true.
Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and ignoring our requests to stop. If you keep doing that we will ban you.
I used to think HN provided a good balance of open-mindedness and tech topics. It was a nice refuge from places like reddit and Twitter that had become overly politicized. In the last year - in particular since Damore's little lesson about shitting where you eat - the same kind of smarmy calls for "tolerance of different opinions" mixed with constant brigading of people (talk abut "tolerance") have taken over HN.
I really hope for our community's sake that it's just a small number of users ruining it for everyone.
> "automatic downvoting"
Let's set aside the idea that they're automatic for a moment. Unless your mind reading skills are better than mine, it's hard to know the intent from a downvote alone. You can't even know who did it, other than it's not the person you responded to.
> "of non-controversial, easily-proven statements"
Even these may not be constructive to the conversation. They may be tangential, irrelevant, or intentionally misleading. Members may downvote for any of these reasons.
> "comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer."
Yeah, highly charged comments can get upvoted: emotions are a powerful thing, and there's a lot of evidence (is it even controversial at this point?) that emotions fire before rational thought. And there's increasing evidence that our rationality actual does more to rationalize our emotions than work as some sort of logic engine. People have to work against this, and that, indeed, is effort. Frustrating? Incredibly so. Human? Very.
That's not to say we shouldn't work against this, at least some of the time. Internet fora make this all the more difficult because we're engaging with such limited bandwidth. We don't get to hear tone, or see facial expressions. We only have this limited text stream, and so we're likely bringing a lot more of ourselves to fill in the gaps than we often realize.
There's a lot of charged language in your comment here. That's just an observation, not a judgement. How should I respond to that? Should I attempt to put it to the side and respond in a way I think is most effective? Or should I write you off as some hot head that can't control their commenting, going against site guidelines by complaining about voting? Or just silently downvote you for doing so? I often get the impression that that's how some members perceive others as behaving. I don't think that's a useful starting point from which to improve HN, so it's one I consciously choose not to take.
> "a small number of users"
I think it's a combination of a small number of users and the fact that each of us—just because we're human—can sometimes slip. What we can do the rest of the time is not let the slip-ups of others make us respond in kind. It takes more than one person to spread the flames.
Help make HN the place you want it to be. Submit good articles. Write good comments. Upvote good articles and comments. Downvote and flag those you don't think are appropriate for HN. It sounds like you follow HN, so you know how threads on contentious articles go. Do what you can to make it better. (And make a conscious effort to not make it worse.) That includes commenting within the guidelines, such as not commenting on downvotes or mentioning you're flagging articles or complaining that a submission is inappropriate for HN. If you really think there's abuse going on, do contact the mods via the contact link in the footer: they want members to bring things like that to their attention so they can address it.
Honestly, there's really little else you can do, but I think it's enough. Which is why I'm taking the time for this comment. Anyway, best wishes.
Not if it is anything resembling a reasonable interpretation of the text.
I'm not weighing in on whether this evidence (which was based on SAT, IIRC) is correct or has been interpreted validly. I'm just pointing out that this was what Damore claimed (after the snafu arose—so take with at least a grain of salt) this statement was in reference to. I'd love to know if others have different information, especially if it was in earlier drafts of the doc.
In this case, TC would argue that they are distilling his memo by using the phrase "biologically less capable of engineering". Personally (and as a former lawyer, but not a libel lawyer), I think this position is not especially strong, since he focused mostly, if not exclusively, on inclination-type evidence. If you're going to give a one-sentence summary of the memo, you probably shouldn't refer to ability instead of inclination.
And given that the person they're talking about just sued Google, I'd say it's unwise to use a characterization like this—even if it is ultimately legally justifiable. Why not say "biologically less suited for engineering", which would encompass the possibility of both ability and desire?
Maybe you shouldn't, but it ain't libel.
I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Would you mind clarifying a few things?
- Do you mean all Americans, or just some?
- When you say "do not understand", what do you mean by that?
- I'm unclear as to why you specifically mentioned Americans. Are you comparing them to some other group(s)? And if so, which one(s)?
Be aware, 60% of Republicans belie e that the earth really is only 6,000 years old.
By not understanding he means that, that they don't understand that they don't understand that in distribution when traits are different on a average that that doesn't mean that in one group all individuals of one groups have stronger or weaker traits than individuals of the other group.
Heh. I rest my case.
But, to respond directly: of course, I'm speaking colloquially to suggest many Americans.
I specifically mention Americans because this discussion is about an American suing an American company, in a kerfuffle over American ideals (and law) of sex nondiscrimination. American education norms seem to leave even bright people susceptible to deep confusion when claims are based on statistics.
I'm Irish.
From the memo:
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
Minus a bit of softening language ("in part", "may"), proposing that women are on average less biologically capable of programming is exactly what he's saying.
Also, because I know how HN works, let me pre-empt the inevitable reply to this one: "but what if there ARE sex differences?! shouldn't we be allowed to talk about that!? Freedom of speech!?!"
Scientists who study this stuff (including those cited by Damore) can and do talk about it, and the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. What effects there may be are absolutely dominated by sociological factors.
Sociological factors that some companies are attempting to counter, which is what Damore didn't like, which is why he issued his complain-y memo to start with.
And THAT is why people are upset with him. Not because he's an amateur biologist with a day job as a programmer who just earnestly wants to have an innocent conversation about sexual dimorphism. It's because he's just another brogrammer whose jimmies got rustled by the thought of women being his peers, and decided to insult (on average) his female colleagues and create a hostile work environment for which he was (quite correctly) fired.
Whether sex differences explain the gender disparity in tech isn't even the kind of question that cog dev folks ask.
Hey, let's keep things civil. Please consider Hanlon's Razor in this case.
How about something like, "I don't think you're correct about the consensus. Citations please?"
> “It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me.)”
For more, check out the citations on this article: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/16/16153740/tech-diversity-p...
Finally, even if the facts were true that women on averaged perform worse in tech, how do you want to use that information? Cancel all the sensitivity programs designed to solve other very real problems in tech? Or are you saying not only that biology "plays a role", but that _nothing else does_ so we should just completely ignore this as an issue?
In other words, "that's not the kind of question we ask."
Also I looked at the citations, neither of the metastudies looks at differences in sensory perception which imho are the most interesting of the sex differences. But even ignoring that, looking at the statistical significance of certain population traits doesn't tell you anything about their clinical significance. E.g. if you look at two groups of 100 people and one group is 100% alive and the other group is 99% alive, there isn't a significant effect size, but there is a big difference to that one person.
[citation needed]
But what seems to be missing (and what I had hoped for) is research showing that "the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech." I feel like the article should be overflowing with references to this if it's a consensus.
It turns out that even this article admits that
> there’s very little scientists know for certain about which behaviors are due to biology, and which are because of society’s expectations of both men and women
The article essentially concludes that men are competitive.
Maybe I missed something in the article. Which citation really spoke to you and confirmed this consensus?
After having read two lengthy pieces about him and his case, I think you are showing a lack of empathy and willingness to put yourself into some other person's shoes. You might disagree with his actions and world view. But you should maybe not be so quick with your labeling. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam... http://quillette.com/2018/01/05/empathy-gap-tech-interview-s...
And if we're worried about empathy, why don't we stop and think for a while about the people affected negatively by his memo?
Or do you mean the autism excuse (which is from the Guardian journalist, btw, not Damore himself?) I know lots of people on the autism spectrum who are not sexist, or who at least have the intelligence not to send out a memo to the whole company on a nuanced, controversial social topic
"And if we're worried about empathy, why don't we stop and think for a while about the people affected negatively by his memo?" I do. It's you who falsely assumes one can only do one thing.
That being said nobody had a negative reaction until vox leaked it. It had been available for months.
I will also note it seemed to be those who have more tweets than minutes they have been alive that got the most upset about this memo.
I was really disappointed in the response by Google engineers. To this day I have yet to see a proper rebuttal that did not go out of it's way to misrepresent the original memo.
That is what makes me sad. That to this day people still quote things that were not in or even eluded to in the paper.
The latter is an obvious statement however people seems keen to deliberately misinterpret it to fuel their rightous outrage.
I’ll use high jump as an example. Suppose I only hire high jumpers who can leap over X meters. I find that I naturally hire less women because women on average can’t jump as high as men. The women who can are obviously as qualified as men. Now I make the statement that due to biological differences this may explain the hiring disparity, rather than discrimination.
1. Saying that women are "on average" worse programmers is exactly why people are upset with him. He doesn't need to be some kind of insane absolutist in order for what he said to be very problematic.
2. Even if there are statistically significant sex differences with regard to programming ability and inclination, there are also historical and sociological factors that are working against women in tech. Damore's memo was explicitly a negative reaction against some of the programs designed to counteract these systemic issues. As such, even if he were 100% right about the sexual dimorphism (which he isn't, see my other post in this thread), using that as an argument against trying to solve the sociological problems is not only logically unsound, but exhibits bad faith and bad motivations.
2. “How dare he question the effectiveness of affirmative action” is also not an argument.
That is literally the whole point of his memo, that women have a different (i.e, worse, in this context) statistical distribution of ability and inclination to the tech field.
> “How dare he question the effectiveness of affirmative action” is also not an argument.
Sure it is. His argument is structured as follows:
1. Negative effect Q is caused by both A and B. 2. We can't do anything about A. 3. Therefore we shouldn't do anything about B.
That's just bad reasoning.
Damore's manifesto purports to present evidence that there "maybe" are inherent differences between genders ("may" and "might" are also sprinkled all over the place for good measure.) He even acknowledges that this is far from a complete picture. But then he goes on to conclude that:
1) That must explain the existing gender distribution in engineering
2) Google trying to explore doing outreach to increase diversity must necessarily imply discrimination of the unfairly oppressed white heterosexual male
So trying to dismiss all criticism by splitting hairs over whether he meant that the average, the median, or all women are uninterested in engineering completely misses the point that either way the conclusions are unwarranted. The whole thing smacks of persecution complex first, finding "evidence" later.
No, he's saying that they also might be less interested, for biological reasons. I recommend actually reading the memo (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...): "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men."
I recommend you start realizing that people can read something and interpret it in vastly different ways.
Of course then you might have a revelation about this whole thing.
That isn't my interpretation at all. His entire point was that Google's current strategy was ignoring the cultural and sociological factors that might be discouraging women from entering the field. Rather than simply giving women preferential treatment during the hiring process, and going out of the way to specifically hire women, he argued that we should be spending more time identifying why women aren't naturally drawn to the field (or why more women later choose to leave the field). Fix that problem first, or the women that get hired will eventually leave, because we haven't done enough to consider why they don't feel welcome.
He never said that women are unfit to be engineers. He argued (clumsily, I admit) that we've created an environment that favors the preferences and strengths of men over those of women. If we want to see more women thrive in tech, start by changing the culture.
I think that most of the outrage over Damore's memo can be chalked up to poor communication on his part. He lays out evidence, but he never explicitly states his argument. It's like he assumed there was a single, obvious conclusion that readers would arrive at. Some of us got the message, but apparently a whole lot more didn't. The outcome is almost perfect in its irony: he cites a greater emphasis on empathy as a way of making the engineering field more hospitable to women, but he fails miserably at using empathy to evaluate how people will interpret his own words.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
There's Grant's response added by Scott to the comments [0], but I don't think that really qualifies as a rebuttal.
[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
And a very strong case can be made that women make different life choices which result in generally different outcomes in those areas.
ugh.
From the memo:
"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership"
preferences and abilities he says.
He suggests ways to alter Google's engineering jobs to suit abilities females are more likely to excel at, such as making work more social.
Its almost like different doesn't mean worse.
oh and diversity programs are bad. for some reason.
The person who isn't interested wouldn't even be applying in the industry in the first place.
Also, notice that interest doesn't necessarily translate into performance, as there are plenty of factors that affect performance besides "general interest in tinkering with things." Some of the worst performers I've met were obsessive "language experts" who enjoyed gaming (another "male" trait) and spent their weekends on their computers. Their apparent obsession didn't make them more performant than parents who spent nights and most weekends with their kids.
I am happy he got his ass fired.
[0]: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-g...
[1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees...
When the majority of people are too afraid to come to someone's defense (publicly) because they're afraid that the internet pitchfork mobs will come and destroy their lives too, a large part of society is doing something wrong.
And that large part of society that attempts to do the silencing/shaming/smearing/destroying of the opposition might think they're scoring a victory for their cause (whether or not that cause is worthy is beside the point), but that's not necessarily true, and we saw proof of that in the last US election.
When Clinton got millions more votes?
As a manager you have to think about everyone in the team.
> I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives always appear to defend this guy and try to pretend the memo wasn't full of repugnant crap.
I think if he had made a better written argument that focused more clearly on the idea that part of the gender gap is due to a lack of interest by women, that he probably still would be employed.
> Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership
None of this says anything about the abilities of any individual women. There are many excellent female engineers. Nor does it say that these excellent women engineers don't face discrimination because of their gender. All it says is that you'd expect fewer women to be represented in the population of the most competent engineers (in the same way you find fewer men in veterinary fields, for example).
Given there is a section in the memo with similar verbiage as the article's quote, I would give some slack to the author if the sentiment remained from the original. However the author's quote changes the meaning of what Damore said quite a bit.
[1] And averages are of course irrelevant when dealing with individuals, who should each be judged according to their own merit, not according to generalizations of the groups they belong to.
e.g. It would be like me suggesting you wrote: "men and women are different 'repugnant crap'". It's accurate, but misrepresentative of what you meant. One is honest, and the other is dishonest.
Personally I say give everyone the same rights (i.e single people) and a large part of the problem would go away.
B = biological causes
... A differs in part due to B ...
... reason why we don't see equal rep in tech/leadership.
Then he goes on to say maybe if we take A into consideration when designing tech and leadership roles, can we solve this dilemma.
He does not mention performance, just preference.
> the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes
From the article:
> women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering
Do you not see the difference?
It's always the same kind of crap from bigots. "Women MIGHT be less capable of engineering." "Black people MIGHT be more prone to crime." "Gay people MIGHT be more likely to be pedophiles." and it's always based in bigotry, not in science or evidence.
The second sentence wasn't written by Damore, so why attribute to him what he didn't write?
For example, when navigating, men tend to use dead reckoning, while women tend to prefer landmarks.
Similar differences may exist with respect to the modes of thinking useful for engineering. With that in mind, consider that our current modal computer architecture and programming paradigms were designed and implemented by men. There may be some intrinsic bias towards man-thought embedded in the entire toolchain.
As a thought experiment, imagine a computing system designed from the ground up by women, with no input whatsoever from existing systems or concepts. A group of females are placed in a time stasis bubble with no outside communication, and emerge from it only after they develop a computing ecosystem of equal capabilities to the existing one.
With this in mind, now give all new students in the pipeline the option to try out both, then choose between the new system and the old for the entire remainder of their career. In this experiment, try to determine whether, after 20 years, the overall balance between sexes is equal, and whether the balance within each system is biased to one sex or the other.
If Babbage and Lovelace had further developed their computational mills, Lady Ada's influence over early programming might have snowballed, such that software development would have been sex-biased towards women from the start. As it is, the ecosystem currently sex-biased towards men was created mostly by men, simply as a matter of feedback. In order to make the existing ecosystem less intrinsically biased in the future, it needs to be shaped by a less-unbalanced group now.
So the natural biological differences are irrelevant. A fair system would have caused those differences to cancel out or complement each other through equal participation. To make the unfair system more fair, you have to force it, against its natural flow toward unfairness.
It would actually be a rather interesting theory to test, and I would hope someone does test the theory. However your claim is not currently known to be true, rather just a promising theory.
1) Professions tend to become more gender biased over time
2) It was equally likely that computing become a female dominated field.
These are novel claims that require justification. If (1) was true, we should expect to see it in other fields. But many industries seem quite stubbornly gender neutral - for example medicine. (Although many specialties are male dominated or female dominated). And if (2) were true we should see the same profession have different gender biases in different cultures. But I don’t think we see that either. My understanding is that generally the direction of gender bias we see in other highly gender biased fields is consistent cross-culturally. (nurse, prison guard, career criminal, construction worker, child care worker, etc).
If there is an imbalance in intrinsic inchoate biases, such as if men tended to unconsciously hire 55% men and 45% women, whereas women preferred to hire 50% each, then an initial 50-50 split, but with no other biases in play after someone enters the field, would drift towards an equilibrium at around .5263 men and .4737 women. More men magnify the male bias towards males.
My other assumption was that early movers have a magnified effect on the future of the field. Think about how any arbitrary decisions made by Turing or von Neumann could still be affecting computing today, like the sign convention for the charge on an electron--that could have been +1 instead of -1, and many of the signs in physics equations would be flipped. If a female had been making those decisions, we might be using a different computing paradigm that would better match female thought patterns. Computing as we now know it initially came about through the confluence of war and academia. Mathematicians designed machines to aim artillery pieces and automate military-grade ciphers, and then to automatically break automated ciphers. The development of computing has occurred rapidly and recently, and after air travel and telephony, such that there really is only one global culture for it. The body of work is already so large, and readily available to everyone, that starting from a different foundation today really does require the fictional time stasis bubble that I described.
You would have to look back into history, when culture barriers were stronger, to look for examples of computing devices that may have been used preferentially by men or women.
I agree and acknowledge that. But many other fields are much older than computing, and arose independently in separate countries (medicine, childcare, law, organised crime, nursing, farming, cooking, construction, etc). If your hypothesis were true we should expect strong, consistent gender biases in all those fields. And we would expect that the dominant gender in different fields would vary across different cultures. But we see the opposite of that in the world - the dominant gender in different professions is remarkably consistent between isolated cultures. In the case of child care its even consistent cross-species.
SSC had a much more in-depth analysis than I'll manage in this comment. The onus is on you to explain why we don't see that actually happen in the world, as would be predicted by your theory.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
> The body of work is already so large, and readily available to everyone, that starting from a different foundation today really does require the fictional time stasis bubble that I described.
I understand why this feels true, but in practice it is easier today than it has ever been to make novel user interfaces for programmers and users. There are no gatekeepers between you and your code editor. Please experiment with this; I'd love to see what you come up with.
Your understanding isn't correct, at least for nursing.
Nurses were male until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing#History give examples of predominately nurses and caregivers in other cultures before that time. http://minoritynurse.com/rethinking-gender-stereotypes-in-nu... says "Before modern day nursing, men were nurses, not women. The earliest recorded nursing school was established in India around 250 B.C. It was exclusively for men; women were not allowed to attend because it was believed that women were not as pure as men."
What happened in the 1800s? Quoting from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1081399.pdf :
> Through the efforts of Florence Nightingale in the mid-nineteenth century, nursing was established as a women's profession (Hus, Chen & Lou, 2010). Nightingale's image of the nurse as subordinate, nurturing, domestic, humble, and self-sacrificing, as well as not too educated, became prevalent in society. The American Nursing Association ostracized men from nursing until 1930, when as a "result of a bylaw amendment, provision was made for male nurses to become members of the American Nurses' Association" (In Review - American Nurses' Association, p. 6). Looking back in nursing history, Florence Nightingale, and the American Nursing Association ostracized men from the nursing profession.'
See also http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1997.... , "History appears to indicate that men have had a place in nursing for as long as records are available, but their contribution has been perceived as negligible, largely because of the dominant influence that the 19th century female nursing movement has had on the occupation's historical ideology."
> The term nosocomial originates from the latin nosocomi, the name given to male care-givers, meaning that men were prominent in Ancient Rome
... If they needed a special word for male care-givers in ancient rome, that implies they assumed care givers were female by default.
I don't see how you can therefore infer that men weren't the majority of nurses back then.
As for the term "nosocomi", it doesn't imply that care givers were female by default. Latin is a gendered language. A different word would have been applied to female caregivers. As an example from Spanish, think "maestro" and "maestra" for male and female teacher, respectively.
If the Latin only used the masculine form, and never the feminine, then it indicates the job was primarily (or perhaps only) done by men.
Consider the word "maid", short for "maiden" meaning "female virgin." We have a special word for female domestic workers but that doesn't imply that domestic workers were male by default.
Similary, in many English speaking parts of the world, a senior or supervisory nurse is a "sister". This title includes males, eg. from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282839878_Clinical_... "… what was nice there was a senior male sister that welcomed us and orientated us, so that really help me a lot to accept the situation …".
A male sister may also be referred to using the gender neutral term "charge nurse".
Again you see that a gendered term for a given job does not imply that job is usually done by the other gender.
Or, we have "mailman", "chairman", "cabin boy" for jobs which were usually done by males, while "charwoman", "lunch lady", and "call girl" indicate females. The existence of a special gendered term doesn't mean the mail was usually delivered by women, or that prostitutes were usually men.
How many people with top engineering skills do you think flip patties at McDonalds? Probably not many. Does that mean they're worse at flipping patties? No, it means they want to work elsewhere.
I have a lot of problems with how the issue was raised by Damore and I think his firing was appropriate, but I also agree that his essay has been wildly mischaracterized by the media.
If you want to make a case that someone means something other than what they clearly say (or write) then you should have a convincing argument to justify such a claim. Otherwise you're just projecting your prejudices on the discussion.
Are you seriously saying that the meaning I should take away from that quote is that women don't work in tech because of their superior ability?
And the quote we're arguing about, "women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering", also says "may". So it seems you're arguing a strawman.
So an overly simplified argument might be women don't work in tech because they both prefer, and are superior in, different working environments.
What you should take away from his quote is nothing. Especially the paraphrased portion of the quote that ignores preferences. Read his memo in it's entirety and judge it in it's entirety.
I don't think this part is inherently wrong, and could be proven or disproven with well designed studies.
So it's your projection of what you assume he really thinks. What evidence are you basing this on?
He spoke to the distribution of preferences and abilities. Turning this into an absolutist simplification should offend anyone with a brain.
The science seems to state that nature rolls the dice more with males than with females. We know, for instance, that there are far more very low IQ males than females, and this is understood as fact. This doesn't mean that you or I are therefore low IQ, despite the distribution increase. And the stats seem to say that nature also varies on the side of high IQ more with males.
That says nothing to whether a given male or female are either low or high, and only applies at scale. Scale that is meaningless when assessing a given candidate, but is certainly pertinent when talking about representation across an entire industry or large organization.
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
Perhaps because what he actually said was that statistically women tend to have lower expression of the traits that engineering positions favor and lower interest in those positions. And because of this the representation of women in tech is lower than their representation in the general population.
Nowhere did he say "all women are worse than all men at engineering jobs". In fact he repeatedly explained that there are tons of exceptions to the statistical rule.
As I recall, his entire point is that we should be reshaping the field to make it more appealing to women so that they are drawn to it naturally, as opposed to the current strategy of giving women preferential treatment in the hiring process, only to have them leave because we haven't addressed the underlying problems that are driving them away.
That's hardly a radical idea. There are benefits to his approach: I, for one, think the field would benefit greatly if we focused more on, for example, the importance of empathy. Thinking about others ought to be a fundamental pillar of software engineering, as it naturally leads to better UX, APIs, and services. And when we think about the people who will be maintaining our code, we're inclined to write better code that is easier to grok.
You even highlight the word _exactly_ but that is not what he said. That quote says they don't have equal representation and there maybe biological differences to blame.
The main reason for confusion seems to be the quote assumes women might not be as attracted by tech work as men are. That assumption changes the meaning because in your interpretation "Women want to be in tech as much as men and D'Amore is saying they just don't have the genes for it" vs "Women want to be in tech less than men to start with and besides bigotry, hate and marginalization, cultural biases, there could be a biological explanation for it".
I know we all think tech is awesome, we are getting paid to do what we love, etc. But it turns out many people, and maybe women more than men, don't find sitting in a cubicle all day inverting binary trees appealing. I don't think biology is the main driver here [+] but D'Amore does. He might be wrong, but I don't see why it had to become this controversial topic and lead to firing and lawsuits. They could have just said "here is why science doesn't support your view, thanks for starting the discussion, but you're wrong" and leave it at that.
[+] I don't support his view, I'd personally blame culture for women not even wanting to be in tech. Having lived in Eastern Europe where there is less "stigma" against girls liking math and computer science. It's not a cause, or a talking point at least, it's just a profession like accountant or doctor.
[1] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
[2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
[3] https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_funny_thing_happ...