Sandhya Raghavan
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Written By: Sandhya Raghavan | Updated : August 9, 2017 1:21 PM IST
It was long believed that intelligence banishes prejudice, but along came Harvard-educated, Google engineer James Damore to prove us all wrong. The Google employee's ten-page memorandum was a rant against the tech Goliath's diversity policies and its left leanings, stating that the lack of female representation in the company was not due to bias women faced at the workplace but rather due to the biological disadvantages women face on account of their gender. To put it plainly, Damore believes women make sh*@ty engineers. Isn't that correct? The memo also comes at an inopportune time for Google since it is already facing a lawsuit from the US Department of Labor for its alleged discrimination against women.
What he said
Coming to the memo, Damore starts off with a declaration: "I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don t endorse using stereotypes." The irony, Mr Damore, you wouldn't recognise it if it smacked you in your face with your own memo! In his 10-point memorandum, Damore betrays his inner prejudices and sexism, despite his disclaimer that states the opposite.
He says that biological differences that make men better at engineering have little to do with social conditioning as these differences are universal and are seen across cultures. Even men castrated at birth and raised as females tend to act like males. He also tends to assume that women are more inclined towards jobs that are social or artist. Among his blanket statements, Damore also points out that women show a higher interest in people and men in things, which should give Google the perfect excuse for justifying its skewed gender ratio.
(Read: How gender bias affects population explosion)
Why Damore is wrong
Apart from not citing any studies to validate his claims, my primary problem against Damore is that his rant would do a lot to hurt the cause of the female engineers in the Silicon Valley who are already facing prejudices. Outnumbered, now they also to face right-wing aggressors who will quote from Damore's memo every time the problem of female representation or any gender-bias issue comes up.
Ours is a society where little girls and boys are compartmentalised into neat boxes of pink and blue throughout their lives. Frocks and dolls for girls, pants and fire trucks for boys; the society ascribes on the child what it should become solely by virtue of its gender. A statement like Damore's will bolster these gender stereotypes that we have been vehemently trying to fight for decades.
(Read: Here s why I buy my daughter s clothes from the boys section)
While it is a fact male and female brains are wired differently [1], it doesn't mean that these differences put one gender at an advantage over the other. It doesn't say anything about how these differences could impact cognitive abilities. Even in Damore's world, why couldn't a woman with an affinity for aesthetics and social skills bring her expertise to the complicated "male world" of coding?
The socio-cultural milieu of the past few decades has not been very kind to women. Maybe it's not biology that keeps us from becoming engineers and mathematicians, but certain beliefs that women are not inherently capable of certain jobs that are perpetuated by the society. When a woman steps into what is deemed to be a "man's world" she is repeatedly reminded of her privilege and treated like an outsider. Ask any female engineers that. In a 2009 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, proved that being in what is considered a stereotypical masculine environment had a discouraging effect on women. [2] This explains why women don't feel motivated to take up stereotypically masculine jobs and why there are so few women in the "hallowed" field of engineering.
Also, another 2003 study proved how priming negative stereotypes can lead to lower performance among stigmatised individuals, in this case women. [3] He earlier mentioned that women showing lesser interest in "masculine" jobs is a universal phenomenon. Guess what else is universal? Patriarchy and female subjugation! Still want to blame biology Mr Damore?
Inherent contradictions
At the heart of his argument is the notion that gender roles are fixed by a force stronger than social conditioning, biology. But he betrays the confidence in his own theory when he gives his suggestion for levelling the gender gap. He says, "If we, as a society, allow men to be more feminine, then gender disparity will shrink, although probably because men will leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles." This means even he believes that what is stereotypically ascribed "masculine" and "feminine" are fluid. By suggesting that the society free men from their male gender roles (his only sensible statement in the 10-page memo), Damore undid his own argument.
I agree with Damore when he says that we all have inherent biases, left or right. But I differ from him when it comes to making a spectacle of my prejudices, especially when my prejudices can do a lot of harm. It's the same reason why we quash any There is a line that freedom of expression shouldn't cross and Damore's statements have crossed that. Google was trying to save face by firing him since they are afraid of looking bad as they are trying to win a perception battle. So I would neither praise nor criticise their decision. But by firing him, Google has given him the martyrdom he and the Silicon Valley conservatives were craving for! But I am very sure that the MRAs and the Red Pill activists will make a hero out of him.
To conclude, I think Damore is wrong to assume that intelligence is a fixed phenomenon. It in fact, can be developed and expanded. Ask researcher Dr Carol Sorich Dweck that.[4]. Nothing that a little bit of faith and encouragement can't change. A lot of girls out there don't venture out into the deemed male territory not because they can't, but because they are told they have no business there. We need to teach our children that it is fine to be different and that the society shouldn't be the one dictating what they can and cannot do in life.
(Read: Five ways to follow gender-neutral parenting)
References:
1. Ingalhalikar, M., Smith, A., Parker, D., Satterthwaite, T. D., Elliott, M. A., Ruparel, K., ... & Verma, R. (2014). Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 823-828.
2.Cheryan, S., Plaut, V. C., Davies, P. G., & Steele, C. M. (2009). Ambient belonging: how stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(6), 1045.
3. Schmader, T., & Johns, M. (2003). Converging evidence that stereotype threat reduces working memory capacity. Journal of personality and social psychology, 85(3), 440.
4.Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child development, 78(1), 246-263.
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