Response to: "Exposing Hidden Biases at Google to Improve Diversity"

According to The New York Times, Google is just like every other tech company, a man's world. If you think about it, this statement is true. Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple. Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo!. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. These giant tech companies were all founded by men.

Being stuck in a "man's world" also means that women do not have the opportunity to play a role in these companies, more specifically, Google. According to general stereotypes, men are seen as the dominant role - the stronger, smarter, clever ones. Sex discrimination even goes back to the fifteenth century. Men were the only ones who were able to receive a proper education, while the women were stuck at home, cleaning and cooking. In modern day, women are seen as the ones who can't defend themselves, the ones who get abused on the side of a road, the ones who should just become a stay-at-home mom instead of working, the ones who aren't capable of doing anything.

Luckily, over the past centuries, women have been seen as a more serious contender, not just in the real world, but also the business world. However, data about Google's workforce highlights that there is still work to be done in order for women to achieve equal treatment. According to The New York Times, eighty-three percent of Google's engineering employees are male and out of the thirty six top ranking executives and managers, only three of them were women.

Maybe this was all a coincidence and that Google was unconsciously being biased. Or maybe Google was caught red-handed and trying to cover up their faults. Whatever the case is, the only important point is that Google is attempting to fix the situation. Women and men are both living, breathing, human beings and they should be treated equally. Men shouldn't get more opportunities and privileges simply because they are of a different sex than women. Hiring somebody for a position should be based on skills rather than gender.

According to The New York Times, Google has been offering several anecdotes about how a less biased culture in the workplace is improving. And while that's all good and exciting to hear, we have to remember that these stories are just that. Stories. They are unreliable sources, that provide no evidence what-so-ever. Google can say that they're working on improving conditions all they want, but they have to provide the evidence to back up their statements. If Google has time to invent "self-driving cars", then you better believe that they have time to improve gender equality in the work force.

Sometimes, a person (or group) can be unknowingly biased, like how Google claims they have been. As Brian Welles says, "Everyone is a little bit racist or sexist", and that is true. However, it doesn't matter if Google is lying or not about their staffing. The critical point is that they are taking appropriate measures to fix this problem. Hopefully, Google isn't just talking the talk, but actually walking the walk, because nobody deserves to be judged due to gender. Although, it hasn't ceased to exist in our world, we are now recognizing the problem and doing something about it.

via abc7 news