While illustrating how the entire Silicon Valley is still struggling with the womens' role and contribution in the field of technology, Google's new diversity chief refused to accept a male colleague's argument that the online tech behemoth has a "politically correct monoculture" that ignores differences between the opposite genders, reported Bloomberg.
The memo of the engineer is now viral and has spread across the internet. In that memo, he has given a detailed list of what he called possible "non-bias" causes for the under-representation of women in the industry. He argued that the company's left-leaning workplace culture prevents honest discussion of the issue. The document, titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," was posted by Gizmodo.
Danielle Brown, the aforementioned new VP and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, People Operations at Google, in response to this memo, said that the worker has "advanced incorrect assumptions about gender." She also added to her memo that she has told other employees that his views are not something that the company promotes or supports.
"We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company. We've continued to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul," said Brown, who became the new vice president for diversity at Alphabet Inc.'s Google last month.
While many Silicon Valley companies have taken strong stands for several social causes such as climate change and transgender rights, unfortunately, the entire industry has been quite inadequate in expanding the female and minority workforce. Having said that, as per Bloomberg, 26% of all the computer and mathematical jobs now belong to women in the U.S, which is actually down from what it used to be in the 1960s.
The pay gap has always been a huge issue in the industry. As per government data, till date, female computer and information systems managers get only 88 cents as opposed to each dollar that's paid to their male counterparts.
In his memo, the engineer said that men have a higher drive for status, pushing them into tech and leadership positions that require "long, stressful hours" while "women on average look for more work-life balance."
"Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as biased as mandating increases for women's representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts," the memo says.
"I started just a couple of weeks ago," wrote Brown, "and I had hoped to take another week or so to get the lay of the land before introducing myself to you all."
