Google Struggles To Hide Its Inequality
Earlier this August, senior software engineer for Google, James Damore, wrote what is now the infamous Google memo titled, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” Damore’s memo sent out to a large part of the company consisted of a slew of insults toward the company’s diversification initiatives, including Google’s vision of creating a more culturally diverse and aware team in order to stay current within a more diverse modern day and age. Damore slammed these initiatives, claiming that Google’s left wing bias was actually hindering the “ideological diversity” of the company. He called out for the higher-ups to to not focus so much on diversifying the company. This memo continued to berate women within the company, stereotyping women in the workforce as “moody, anxious, jealous, etc.” Damore continued to state that the hiring of women makes engineering and software production more difficult as they bring down the speed and efficiency of the production.
As this memo circulated around, Google received major backlash and media attention. The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai responded to the controversies with this memo:
“We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
As the controversies and backlash died down after this statement and time passing, Google continues to face mild criticism continually. In recent news, Google has been sued for not paying women as much as their male counterparts. Three women who worked at Google recently sued the company for their pay gap. Women in STEM jobs have been fighting for even a taste of equality within these companies, as many companies have been called out for the sames issues, even including Microsoft in 2015. There must be action taken in order to change this insitutitonal sexism within the STEM programs, which is potentially a big reason women do not go into these fields. A fight for equality will increase the diversity and modernize the way society views who works in a certain type of job.