Google's sins of omission

By Jason Lim

“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” was the title of the 10-page memo that James Damore circulated with his fellow Google employees. In the memo, Damore took issue over what he perceived was Google’s current Politically Correct (PC) culture, claiming that the gender gap in Google’s diversity was not due to discrimination but inherent differences in what men and women find interesting. Damore was promptly fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Most of the outrage against this memo had to do with Damore’s claim that there are biological differences between men and women that lead to natural segmentation in the workplace based on roles. Specifically, he argued that women have less interests in STEM and are therefore self-selecting themselves out of the engineering and coding jobs dominated by men.

I found Deborah Soh’s piece in the The Globe and Mail titled, “No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science,” especially interesting. Soh points to various scientific studies that illustrates that pre-natal, gender-determining biochemistry largely dictates what you would be more interested in as you grow up. She claims that, “As the memo suggests, seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in STEM is unrealistic. As gender equity continues to improve in developing societies, we should expect to see this gender gap widen. This trend continues into the area of personality, as well. Contrary to what detractors would have you believe, women are, on average, higher in neuroticism and agreeableness, and lower in stress tolerance.”

Soh doesn’t believe that this claim is sexist because it’s a biological fact that physical and mental difference between men and women exists and can be proven through science. Perhaps. But Soh is wrong that Damore’s memo isn’t anti-diversity. She just has the wrong idea of what diversity really is.

And it’s not just Soh. When people speak of diversity, they are usually talking about affirmative action. Affirmative action is a tool that enhances the diversity of an organization through the recruitment, development and retention of qualified individuals who historically have been under-represented in the work force. Diversity is not a replacement for affirmative action.

Rather, diversity is built on the proposition that if we spend time on assuring that all employees and their abilities are accessible and if processes are inclusive and do not deliberately or inadvertently exclude anyone from fully participating, then individual employees will take greater risk in expressing new and different ideas.

In this case, Google will have a larger pool of ideas from which to draw. As a result, decisions, new programs, new processes will be able to take advantage of a broader set of options, as well as, reflect a multicultural perspective by those participating in their formulation. When there is full participation in the development of decisions, employees are usually more committed and motivated to achieve goals they helped create. Diversity produces organizational change through the inclusion of all employees and clients.

Moreover, affirmative action is all about redressing exclusion. But diversity addresses problems arising from lack of inclusion. It’s easier to explain this with an example. In the past – and still prevalent today – police and fire departments never considered women as potential police officers and firefighters; thus all institutional requirements for participation, from facilities to qualifications, were generated from male characteristics. Byron Kunisawa, a diversity expert, terms this a “Design of Omission.”

Such omissions are especially widespread in today’s society because the socio-cultural framework by which we assign values were predominantly based on Western European, male-centric model. This is important to note because the initial participants in every organization represent the “criteria for participation” – they define the norm. More importantly, the manner in which they learn to socialize, communicate and cooperate to accomplish work becomes the organizational culture.

Even academic fields of study like STEM is largely defined and assigned value in today’s world based on this model in which women were largely excluded. While saying that men and women are physically and emotionally different may not be sexist on the surface, blaming that difference on women underperforming in a system that was originally designed and incentivized around male-dominant traits certainly is.

Therefore, a sustainable solution by organizations to address the diversity issues is not to enforce some types of quotas based on gender or ethnicity. Creating special programs for those formerly excluded paradoxically exclude those who were previously included. While this may be necessary as a stop-gap measure, this type of solution does not eliminate exclusion but establishes a corresponding model for exclusion. Therefore, the real solution to models of exclusion is the establishment of methodology for inclusion. This process for inclusion must expand the original criteria for participation to include the backgrounds, experiences and belief systems of the new and diverse workforce.

Not realizing this, James Damore has engaged in his own ideological echo chamber.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.