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.
