Gender Bias In The Technology Industry

There is no denying that gender bias is a realistic problem in the society. Women from all walks of life, especially in some traditionally male-dominated field, like tech industry, are under greater pressure, taking more criticism, and even suffering unfair treatment because women are labeled as emotional, weak, and easy to anxiety. They often have to work much harder than men to get approval. The updated workforce data from Google shows that only 31% of employees are women in 2017, which had been already increasing 14% from three years ago. In the following essay, one will be discussed is a decision that Google made to fire an engineer who wrote discrimination words on Memo. To better analyze this case, we will talk about the ethical issues involved, key stakeholders impacted, possible alternative relative to different ethical frameworks, and a recommendation for this kind of ethical dilemma.

First, what happened in this case, is, on August 8, 2017, a male soft engineer, James Damore, was fired by Google and he wanted to take the legal tool to challenge former employer. Previously, he questioned the “diversity” policy of technology company employees in a memo. He believed that the gender bias in the technology industry was mainly due to the difference in biology, saying that women were not suitable for programming. After the memo was leaked, the issue of gender discrimination in Silicon Valley has once again attracted attention. The key ethical issues involved in this case is the boundary of “freedom of speech”.

The main problem that Google face is whether a person should publicly publish gender-discriminatory remarks in the workplace and if they should fire him because of his personal injustice. When the internal memo was forwarded outside the company, even the entire Silicon Valley, the anger and discussion it brought were out of control. Some employees will even consider resigning if Google does not respond to this problem. Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, deliberately shortened the holiday for this matter, dismissed the employee for "violated the company’s code of conduct." However, Damore believes he has a legitimate right to express concerns about the work environment. The next objective is to identify the key stakeholders involved and their perspectives.

The first key stakeholder is Damore because he is the main character in the dilemma. He does not consider his speech to be gender-discriminatory. His original intention in the Memo was to question the company's ”diversity“ policy which he believes that Google is undergoing reverse discrimination on the grounds that the company “specializes the treatment of employees recruited by diversification”. Another stakeholder is Google because they have to decide whether freedom of speech can override the company’s ethical standards. Google believes that what Damore wrote was obvious gender discrimination and absolutely intolerable. Finally, all female workers or even other ethnic minorities are a set of key stakeholder. Google’s attitude towards this incident will directly impact their survival status getting better or worse. Before making a discussion, all alternative from three ethical frameworks should be considered.

First, utilitarianism is an ethical theory that tells us we can determine the ethical significance of any action by looking to the consequences of that act. Utilitarianism is typically identified with “producing the greatest good for greatest number”. The largest number of stakeholders, in this case, are female workers and ethnic minorities. For the interest of them, Google should fire Damore to demonstrate a firm stand against gender discrimination in the workplace. Another viewpoint is observed through deontological ethics. Deontology which stresses “the ethical centrality of such things as duties, principle, and obligations. It denies that all judgment can be made in terms of consequences.”

The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, has the duties and obligation to safeguard the image of the enterprise and economic benefit. If the memo incident keeps simmering, will lead to huge damage to the company’s culture and image, which will lose its market competitiveness. However, a deontologist would also argue that Google should respect Damore’s right to express opinion as a fundamental right because another formulation of deontological ethics states “a person has a duty to act in a way that respects and treats all others involved in your decisions as ends, not merely as means to an end.”

Finally, Virtue ethics is “an approach to ethics that studies the character traits or habits that constitute a good human life,” Virtue ethics take the value of human life into account. They are worried about respecting all human and communities. Virtue ethics would suggest Google fire Damore because women should be respected. After considering all these ethical theories, I believe that Google has done the right thing. Google fired him not because he questioned Google’s diversity policy, but because of his clear gender bias in his speech. What’s the most important that he said that women are not biologically suitable for technical work. The uncoordinated ratio of males and females in the field of technology is an objective fact. However, the reasons for this phenomenon are very complicated and cannot be generalized as biologically.

For example, over 40% of undergraduate students at Harvard are white, only 6% are black and African American. Does that mean white people are “biologically” smarter? Gender discrimination is defined as prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination on the basis of gender - because of a person's gender. The above viewpoint is obvious sexism, and the prohibition of gender discrimination is written in American law, and also in Google's code of conduct. The corporate culture that Google has painstakingly created, and the employee benefits they have paid have reasons, that is, Companies like Google have entirely succeeded depending on attracting top technology talent.

In employment, it is not just the company that selects employees, but also the employees who are choosing companies. Because once these people start moving to other companies, Google will lose its core value in the market. Even in the United States, which is highly valued, sensitive, and has long-term discussions about gender and racial equality, there will still be someone like Damore who, despite having a good educational background, will still attack women in public. This incident reflects discrimination that actually exists in society, far more serious than we think. Therefore, enterprises have a responsibility to strengthen corporate culture, and each employee should receive diversity training. They are treated differently by gender, neither special care nor discrimination has given. All people have the equal opportunities for competition.