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Engaging the Anti-Diversity Underground
Yes, women are less interested in tech, and that’s why we need diversity more than ever
If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending my free time watching YouTube videos of former Google engineer James Damore, some 15 months after his memo was released, I would have said they were deluded. Damore, if you don’t recall, argued that women are underrepresented in tech not because of bias or discrimination, but because of inherent physiological differences between the genders.
As a former director at the nonprofit Girls Who Code, with a background in electrical and computer engineering and nearly 15 years of tech experience, I couldn’t even look at coverage of the memo at the time. I know firsthand how hard it is to be the only woman in the room, and these arguments about biological differences only make it harder.
I dismissed the memo, and Damore himself, as ignorant without a second thought. But in doing so, I was inadvertently mimicking the very behavior I was protesting: an inability to listen. It took me a year to realize that if we’re going to make any progress in this conversation, we have to engage, and admit that a difference in opinion isn’t always a bad thing.
Though I had zapped Damore from my consciousness, it became clear that his influence wasn’t going away. In March, the New York Times published a large spread on the growing reach of what’s known as the “intellectual dark web,” where, according to columnist Bari Weiss, “heretics” like Joe Rogan exchange viewpoints that the mainstream would find controversial — the idea that identity politics are “toxic” and “tearing American society apart,” for example. The group has taken a liking to Damore’s point of view.
What few have been willing to acknowledge is that, in some ways, people like Damore are right.
Meanwhile, I, like many, grew queasy at the state of public discourse, with ideas flattening to Twitter-length platitudes and one side shouting at the other to no end. So I took a deep breath and finally decided to listen. It’s easy to wave away Damore’s viewpoints as extreme or nakedly misogynist, but as I played hours and hours of interviews…
