Stephen
Kershnar
Women in Tech and Academia
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
December
17, 2019
There
are some interesting issues related to women in high tech industries and academia.
Institutional leaders don’t want to discuss them.
When
a diversity program at Google solicited feedback, one of the people who
attended it, James Damore, wrote a memo entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo
Chamber.” In it, he argues that men and women think differently. Damore (a
former doctoral student in systems biology at Harvard) notes that the
differences are merely shifted bell curve rather than a difference found when
comparing individual men and women. Damore argues that the differences are
likely biological because they are universal across human cultures, often have
clear biological causes, and are linked to prenatal testosterone. In addition,
he argues, the underlying traits are highly heritable and they’re what one
would expect from an evolutionary perspective. As an example, he notes that a biological
male who was castrated at birth and raised as a female still identified with
and acted like a male.
Damore
argues that these biological differences can be seen in that women focus more
on people than things when compared to men. One way to understand this, he
notes, is that women focus more on empathizing and men focus more on
systematizing. This, Damore argues, explains why women prefer jobs in social
areas compared to men and why men prefer jobs in systematizing areas (for
example, coding) when compared to women. He notes that women are higher on some
personality dimensions: agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism. This, he
argues, explains why women have a stronger preference for a balanced and
fulfilling life and men a stronger preference for the long, stressful hours
required for high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership positions. It
explains, he claims, why men take undesirable and dangerous jobs such as coal
mining, garbage collection, and firefighting and why they suffer 93% of
work-related deaths.
There
is controversy over whether Damore is correct. Among the people who think
Damore got the science roughly correct are Rutgers’ Lee Jussim, University of
New Mexico’s Geoffrey Miller, University of Toronto’s Jordon Peterson, and
psychologist and columnist Debra Soh. Damore’s reasoning also overlaps with
research done by Cambridge University’s Simon Baron-Cohen (some of which has
not been replicated) and Harvard University’s Steven Pinker’s summary of the
relevant literature. It is also worth noting that the sex-differences in
personality are small.
Lance
Welton (pen name) wrote “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably” in the Unz Review. In it, he discusses the idea
that female dominance of universities is eliminating the space geniuses need to
make breakthroughs in academia. Such breakthroughs, he claims, are critical to
the generation of new ideas. Relying on the ideas of Edward Dutton, Welton
asserts that geniuses are overwhelmingly male for two reasons. First, males have
more outlier IQs. Specifically, Welton notes, men have a flattened bell curve
and thus more very high and very low IQ scores. Second, he notes, geniuses have
distinctive personality features. Specifically, they tend to have moderately
low conscientious and agreeableness. These features, Welton claims, are connected
to systematizing, an important feature for the generation of new knowledge. As
universities feminize, he argues, the increased emphasis on not causing
offense, working in groups, and rule-governed bureaucracies eliminate the
environment geniuses need to flourish.
Given
its speculative nature, it’s hard to evaluate Welton’s argument. Even if
Welton’s account of the relevant science were correct, it is unclear whether, in
general, the outlier IQ is more productive when paired up with lower levels of
some personality traits (for example, conscientiousness) than with higher
levels of them.
In
addition, it is unclear what, if anything, Damore and Welton want done. They
might want high tech firms and universities to return to merit-based hiring and
promotion and to become less bureaucratic. Alternatively, Welton might want universities
to discount women’s applications similar to what is currently done to white and
Asian applications (see, for example, Harvard). It is unclear whether the
benefit of elite universities emphasizing space for geniuses over rule-governed
bureaucracy outweighs its cost. The cost of discounting women’s applications
for high tech and university jobs is high due to the incredible talent that half
the population brings to the table. There is also a concern about providing
girls and women efficient incentives to develop their intellectual abilities.
One way
to test Damore and Welton’s ideas is to let the different models compete in the
free market. Firms and universities that emphasize competitive norms (for
example, less bureaucratic rule-governance especially against discrimination,
high pressure, no protection from offense, and special space for geniuses)
should be allowed to compete against those that emphasize empathetic norms (bureaucratic
rule-governance especially against discrimination, more attention to work-life
balance, protection from offense, and no special space for geniuses). Other
firms and universities might split the difference. This would provide a test
for the different models’ desirability and productivity. To some extent we have
this now. Consider the different commitments to work-life balance found in
various law firms. Permitting more extreme workplace models and allowing them
to compete would further our knowledge of the tradeoffs. It would also allow
people to choose the type of place they want to work.
The
institutional response to their arguments was as pathetic as it was predictable.
Google fired Damore for his argument despite its having asked for his feedback
on a diversity program he attended. Google’s vice president for diversity
(Danielle Brown) denounced Damore’s memo. She asserted that writing that men
and women are biologically different in how they think and what they want conflicts
with equal opportunity. She didn’t explain why.
An
Indiana University professor (Eric Rasmusen) tweeted out Welton’s article. The university’s
provost (Lauren Robel) denounced Rasmusen, calling his views “stunningly
ignorant.” Instead of explaining what aspect of Welton’s argument was
stunningly ignorant, she denounced Rasmusen and then crawled back under her
rock.
Merely
because Damore’s and Welton’s ideas cause offense doesn’t show that they’re
false. Nor will it make them go away.
