Don’t like our diversity agenda? You’re fired

Earlier this week, a technology website published an internal memo written by a Google employee called James Damore criticising the company’s efforts to diversify its workforce. This is ‘where angels fear to tread’ territory. The American technology sector has come under fire for years for failing to hire and promote enough women and Google is being investigated by the US Department of Labor for allegedly underpaying its female employees. What makes this memo particularly controversial is that Damore takes Google to task for discriminating in favour of women.

He begins by saying that he is pro-diversity and accepts that sexism is one of the reasons women don’t constitute 50 per cent of the workforce in the tech industry. But then he goes on to say that psychological differences between men and women are also a factor and that these differences are, in part, biologically based. For instance, he points out that women in general are more interested in people than things, which helps to explain why fewer women than men study computer science at university and apply for programming jobs.