Why We've Been Responding Wrong to the Google Manifesto

James Damore’s “Google Manifesto” has been taking the Internet by storm. Officially titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the memo spells out Damore’s position on gender inclusion in the workplace. The real reason more women aren’t in tech, Damore says, is that they are biologically different from men in ways that predispose them to struggle in highly competitive and analytical fields. The backlash from Damore’s treatise was swift -- Google fired him, and the Internet exploded with everything from gut reactions to carefully articulated responses. To combat Damore’s limited view of gender, many commentators emphasized that men and women are really not all that different.

But even though Damore’s argument perpetuates inequality, so does the opposite extreme. The idea that men and women are identical implies that all genders should be equally capable of succeeding without any intervention. Responses to Damore that depicted gender differences as largely arbitrary, like this one, run the risk of pressuring women to transform themselves (“With some practice playing the right sort of video game, women can boost their spatial reasoning skills to match those of boys.”) It’s an argument that ends up placing the responsibility on women to change their behavior, instead of indicting company culture.

While the article linked above isn’t wrong, it’s also not working to transform the tech world for women. By only telling part of the story, simplified arguments about how the genders are indistinguishable from one another might be taken to mean that culture change is unnecessary. As a result, women may be pressured to interrupt more, be more assertive, prioritize work over family … in short, to become more masculine. Emphasizing sameness begins in a well-intentioned effort to promote equality, but it eventually glorifies whatever culture already exists in the environment. In tech, that culture is overwhelmingly masculine.

Of course, Damore’s original argument also minimizes the importance of company change by placing the blame on biology. As many commentators have pointed out, his ideas about biologically gendered predispositions are flawed. Columbia University professor Adam Galinsky wrote that Google made the right call in firing Damore because “Biological explanations for sex differences create a clear and present danger to inclusion,” a danger that overrides Damore’s appeal to freedom of speech. 

On the scientific side of things, we don’t have good evidence that gender preferences are innate, but we have plenty of evidence that interests change when the environment shifts. In other words, a person’s surroundings have more power to drive their preferences than the gender they were assigned at birth. Northwestern University professor Alice Eagly pointed out that while early androgen exposure can foster some differences, “biology has multiple pathways by which its influence may be exerted on human psychology … There are many unknowns.” In this article on Damore’s manifesto, Wired argued that Damore’s evidence centers on evolutionary psychology, a problematic field that leverages the idea of evolutionary pressures to explain all sorts of “essential” gender differences. It’s too easy to use evolution as an excuse for lack of evidence, starting with an idea about gender roles and theorizing backwards until you hit something that sounds like science.

Gender differences are real. But instead of the simple biological affair Damore makes them out to be, they are a complex combination of nature and nurture. Our culture’s tendency to promote masculine traits and disadvantage feminine ones means that we have to acknowledge the current differences between men and women if we want to implement real change. Damore’s insistence that programs geared toward helping women succeed are “discriminatory” against men doesn’t bring us any closer to a solution. Neither does the idea that empowerment requires women to become more like men. Both of those positions let company culture off the hook and reinforce a strong preference for masculinity. Instead, we need to rebalance the tech environment so that all genders can be feminine, masculine, or any combination of the two without fear of negative repercussions.

Posted by Ella J. Lombard
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Is Technology to Blame for the Gender Pay Gap in Seattle?

According to a recent article by the National Partnership for Women and Families, Seattle has the biggest gender pay gap of any major city in the United States, with women earning 73 cents to every dollar men make. These statistics, based off 2012 census data, pointed to Seattle, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Detroit as the cities with the largest gender pay gaps. Though each city is approaching this issue in a different way, many fingers in Seattle are pointing at the gender disparity in IT for the answer.

In a debate article published in the Seattle times, Bruce Ramsay argues that female career and lifestyle choices have created the wage gap. Specifically, he maintains that women’s reluctance to pursue high paying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers contributes to this problem: “I see tech people every day at lunch: most are men. That's not discrimination; it's that more men can do, and are willing to do, the sort of computer work for which Seattle's employers are willing to pay good money.” Similarly, in an article in the New York Times, Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that much of the gender pay gap is explained by differing jobs and college majors. She suggests that women who want money should choose different majors: “Talented young women who aspire to be rich and powerful would be advised to major in economics or electrical engineering rather than psychology or social work.”

Ramsay and Sommers have put the blame on women for not being interested in lucrative fields. However, our research at the Stereotypes, Identity, and Belonging Lab has shown repeatedly that small changes to the environment, role models, and media, can help women get interested in STEM fields like computer science. Women are deterred by the surrounding stereotypes of fields like computer science, rather than the content of the fields. 

In our recently published study, we established the role of the media in communicating stereotypes to women. Women who read an article which said that the stereotypes of computer science were changing reported more interest that women who didn’t read an article at all, or read an article saying the stereotypes were the same. Just by letting women know that they do not have to fit the nerdy, masculine stereotype of computer scientists to join the field, the media can help women express more interest in choosing a STEM field.

In a rebuttal to the argument that women are just choosing the wrong fields, Seattle’s Mayor Mike McGinn is right on track with the current research. According to McGinn, the role of socialization as well as lack of female role models cannot be ignored when it comes to career choices. “Women are socialized from childhood to believe they are better suited for jobs in traditionally “female friendly” industries.” McGinn commented on large topics we’ve published about here in the SIBL: “One of the biggest barriers to women entering the tech industry is lack of role models (not to mention institutionalized sexism and frequently unfriendly workplaces).” Our research on role models and work environments suggests that interactions with non-stereotypical rooms and people can bolster women’s numbers in computer science.

Both Mayor McGinn and President Obama are taking action to try to close the gender pay gap. President Obama was quoted saying ““I want every child to grow up knowing that a woman’s hard work is valued and rewarded just as much as any man’s,” and Mayor McGinn has brought together a task force to help the city understand the problem and recommend changes. This task force will focus on city employees, developing programs to help create equal gender representation in currently male dominated and high paying positions, as well as change employment and contracting procedures that may contribute to gender biased decisions.

So how can we reduce the gender pay gap in Seattle? Our research points to a few solutions: present more nonstereotypical representations of STEM in the media, increase the nonstereotypical role models available to women interested in STEM, and reduce the stereotypicality of classrooms and work environments to help women feel more welcome.

What sorts of solutions do you think will make a difference in the gender wage gap? How can we achieve gender equality in pay, not just in Seattle, but throughout the world?

-Posted by Amia

Patching up the Leaky Pipeline: Retention of Women in Computer Science

The UW Computer Science and Engineering department
celebrates their new PhD graduates

As the University of Washington celebrates the commencement of our students, we at SIBL want to congratulate our new doctors of computer science. This year almost 20% of the new PhDs from the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering department were women, a relatively large proportion considering the percentage of women studying computer science decreases as they get further into their education, a phenomenon called the “leaky pipeline”. The leaky pipeline is due in a large part to the additional barriers that women in computer science face throughout their schooling.

Anna North is an ex-computer science major at Stanford who shared her experiences in an article posted on Jezebel. Highly aware of being outnumbered, she struggled to feel at ease among her male peers. North remembers trying to rebel by wearing miniskirts to class to highlight her femininity. Despite her love of programming, North ultimately left the computer science major to pursue a degree in English. She explained that the common stereotype for women in computer science at her school was that “all the girls leave after their first year.” What could have been done differently to prevent North and other women like her from leaving the major?  

Stanford University, Anna’s alma mater, has struggled to retain females in their CS program, but, like many schools, they are trying to address this attrition. An article by TechCrunch noted that departmental dinners are held to encourage current computer science majors, faculty, and people in the industry to meet and mingle. Highly successful, these dinners occur twice a quarter. They foster a sense of community for women in computer science and provide undergraduates with an opportunity to interact with successful female role models in the field. This approach is congruent with findings from the Stereotypes, Identity, and Belonging Lab, which suggest that while both male and female role models can help recruit women into computer science, female role models may be especially important for retention. These role models can help combat the negative stereotypes that are often thrust upon female computer science students and communicate to potential female computer science majors that they do belong and they can succeed in the major. 

No Girls Allowed: Do Masculine Cues Affect Women’s Interest?

 With the recent Super Bowl, one of the most watched TV events in a given year, we thought looking at commercials from Super Bowls past might give us a sense of what popular media might be saying to women about their potential in technology fields. In a commercial launched for the 2012 Super Bowl, Best Buy showcased 10 male innovators of well-known mobile device products. They introduced themselves as the creators of their respective inventions: Shazam, the in-phone camera, Instagram, and more. In the end, a woman introduces Best Buy as the place where all these inventions can be found.

Though the commercial succeeds in communicating the exciting breadth of developments coming forth from the mobile technology industry, could the commercial also be sending a more harmful message? Specifically, does the distinct absence of female innovators signal to women that they do not belong or would not excel in the technology field? The featured men are depicted as prominent innovators in the field, whereas in the video, the only women shown are in positions of service (i.e., flight attendant and sales person).

Research conducted in the Stereotypes, Identity, and Belonging Lab has demonstrated that when people are assessing whether they would fit in a given context, they look to cues in the environment to gauge their sense of belonging. This commercial may act as an environmental cue, sending a message about the environment that women may encounter in the technology world—an environment in which only males are capable of innovation. These cues could perpetuate the underrepresentation of women in computer science by leading women to question their belonging in the field.

Women’s underrepresentation in leadership positions in technology and science has not gone unnoticed; many groups are working on projects to provide women with more information about the prevalence of women in science. In October of 2012 the Royal Society held an edit-a-thon of Wikipedia pages in order to increase awareness of women’s contributions to science throughout history (the story was covered by BBC News). Also, the Victorian ICT for Women Network asked successful women who work in technology fields to send photos with their name and position to be showcased at an event called GoGirl, Go for IT this past June. The event was meant to help recruit female high school students into IT majors. By emphasizing women’s role and representation in science and technology, these groups are providing counter-stereotypical information to women about their representation in science.

So what do you think? Might the Best Buy commercial influence women’s sense of belonging in technology?  Do you think programs like the edit-a-thon and Go Girl Go for IT will encourage women to join the sciences? Or do you think it might remind women that they are underrepresented and deter them even more?

Posted by: Amanda

Young Girls and Computer Science

Dot Diva, an exciting new national initiative aimed at high school girls, is on a mission to create a positive new image for computer science.  The initiative is striving to change perceptions of the field, emphasizing the positive impact that can be made on the world through computer science.  One look at the website, www.dotdiva.org, and it is clear that Dot Diva is working hard to create a fresh image for computer science. 

A national survey conducted by Dot Diva revealed high school girls perceptions of computing;  “as ‘boring’ and ‘hard,’ but they believe it fails to deliver two crucial benefits: ‘working with others’ and ‘making a difference in other people's lives’." This perception of computer science is what has inspired this initiative to work on changing this image.  “Our ultimate goal is to transform this negative perception.”   Dot Diva is working toward this goal by stressing the diversity of opportunities in computer science, the power to make a difference in the world, and the high salary and demand in the field. 

As Dot Diva’s mission statement says, “We’re young women with the power and passion to make a difference.  We believe in the potential of computing to build a better world.”  By reaching out to young women across the country the initiative is spreading its passion for computer science.  Check out Dot Diva’s website to see for yourself how they are putting their passion to work, how to join the Dot Diva community, and be sure not to miss the webisode featuring two young talented female computer scientists.  Let us know what you think about this exiting new initiative!

Posted by: Ben

Barbie Doll is a Computer Engineer?

In 1992, Barbie was programmed to say, “Math class is tough.” Now, she’s defying stereotypes as a tech-savvy computer engineer. This year, the public voted on Barbie’s 126th career for the first time, ultimately choosing computer engineer over other options such as architect, environmentalist, news anchor, or surgeon.

Many people are thrilled that Barbie’s new career might inspire more girls to pursue computer and technology fields, which are typically dominated by men. In fact, women are far outnumbered by men in computer engineering and their participation has only declined recently. If Barbie acts as a role model for girls, she might get more girls interested in these fields.

Yet even though Barbie is now defying gender stereotypes in some ways, she still has her trademark femininity and sexiness. Her new outfit is bright and neon-colored, her hair is long, blonde and shiny, and she’s accessorized with pink glasses, a pink watch, and a pink laptop. What might this say to girls?

Some people are concerned that Barbie might still be expressing gender constraints on girls. Barbie might indicate to girls that it’s okay to be good at science and technology, but it’s still not okay to look like a “geek”, that girls must still look stereotypically feminine to be acceptable. Furthermore, some people point out that her attire makes her look less capable or serious as a computer scientist. Would you trust the computer advice of someone dressed like that?

What do you think? Does Barbie’s new career help or harm young women’s pursuit of technology careers? Does it defy stereotypes or continue to preach feminine ideals?

You can read more about computer engineer Barbie here.


Posted by: Lauren

For the First Time Women Earn More Doctoral Degrees than Men

A recent report by the U.S. Council of Graduate Schools shows that for the first time in history, women earned more doctoral degrees in 2008-2009 than men. According to Ann Bryant of the American Association of University Women,  

"It's great news. The years of stereotyping women out of continuing their doctoral education - they're over".

 It is true that this is a huge advancement for women, however, there are many stereotypes that remain to be overcome. Only 39% of doctoral degrees in business are awarded to women. Women are also still greatly out-numbered at the doctoral level in mathematics, computer sciences and physical sciences, where they make up no more than 30% of the doctoral graduates. Engineering is even more disparate, with only 22% of doctoral degrees being awarded to women. While this is an improvement on the mere 10% of doctoral degrees in engineering women were earning 20 years ago,  

"...we still have those stereotypes. That's why you still see a disparity in wage earning, women as compared to men," says Ann Bryant.

In fact, NPR reports that a male professor with a Ph.D earns $87,200 on average, compared to $70,600 for a female professor with the same credentials. So, yes, we can say goodbye to stereotypically low expectations for women at the doctoral level of education, but must continue to work to move women into traditionally male fields in order to close the wage earning gap.

How can we get more women interested in computer science? For the women already in the field, how can we keep them invested in computer science?

Posted by: Sarah