Men Have Always Used Science to Explain Why Theyre Better Than Women. On Saturday, Gizmodo published a 1. Google software engineer James Damore blasting the companys diversity policies. In the now viral document entitled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, Damore asserts that women are biologically ill equipped to handle the rigors of the tech industry. The encouraging news is that Damore has now been fired from Google, according to multiple news reports. Sadly, the ideas espoused in his letter echo the same pseudoscience peddled by eugenicists and white supremacists for decadesand theyre unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Many ideas embraced by this ex Google employee are based largely on the so called conclusions of evolutionary psychology, a field premised on the idea that our psychological traits are the product of the same natural selection that shaped early human evolution. In practice, evolutionary psychology has been used to justify everything from rape to claims that certain groups of people are inherently more intelligent than others. It has also been criticized for shoddy methodology, ignoring cultural context, and leaping to conclusions on inadequate evidence. Evolutionary psychologists have tried to use their science to determine the best way to seduce women, which they think can be gamed out like Battleship. The fields fraught and controversial history didnt stop Damore from espousing some evolutionary psych of his own, to justify the underrepresentation of women at an enormous technology company. On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways, Damore wrote. These differences arent just socially constructed because for one thing they often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone. Citing something like prenatal testosterone to justify why more men occupy leadership positions in tech reads like classic evolutionary psychology using a vaguely scientific andcontroversial concept to explain an incredibly complex, multifaceted issue. But in evolutionary psychology, many differences between genders in our society including deep inequities can be neatly explained away by hard wired differences in in our brains. We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism, Damore wrote, citing pseudoscientific claims that men get paid more because they have a higher drive for status instead of the overwhelming evidence that gender based discrimination is closely linked to the wage gap. Mandates News. 13NOV17 Ultimus Fund Solutions has been appointed to provide a range of services for Oak Associates seven mutual funds. Colliers International is a leading global commercial real estate company offering comprehensive services to investors, property owners, tenants and developers around. Archives and past articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly. Top SharePoint Internet sites for 2007, 20 platforms by country and industry. AS35001 MYOWNAS MyOwn sprl AS35002 NEWCOMASN SC NextGen Communications SRL AS35003 RAYAS Florian Kirstein AS35004 NETGRUP NetGroup Ltd. LicensedPandCAgencies COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS DIVISION OF INSURANCE PRODUCER LICENSING 1000 Washington Street, Suite 810 Boston, MA 021186200. North Americas premier electronics recycling conference, with over 1,200 attendees from more than 35 countries, a trade show with over 125 exhibiting companies. Of course, using science to justify male superiority is much older than anything espoused by evolutionary psychologists. The idea that women are less psychologically stableor more, bluntly, hystericalhas been around at least since Hippocrates wrote about it in the 5th century BCE. As Freud and his contemporaries later posited, womens biology explained their inherent insanity. Or, as this particular Google employee called it, their neuroticism. Women, on average, have more neuroticism higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance, Damore wrote. Office Enterprise 2007 Pt Brokers' title='Office Enterprise 2007 Pt Brokers' />This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs. Its true that women are more likely than men to be anxious, but theyre also more likely to have experienced physical and emotional abuse, both of which contribute to anxiety, for obvious reasons. How To Break Your Elbow At Home Easily Confused. So the claim that women are neurotic without any context as to whypossibly some differences in brain chemistry, but also, just maybe, greater levels of sexual harassment and social isolation in the workplaceis misleading and frankly, insulting. And while Damore wasnt so extreme as to claim women should be extirpated from the tech world, some of his pseudoscientific notions about why men are inherently better suited to certain jobs ring strongly of eugenics, a school of thinking premised on the idea that certain groups are biologically superior to others. Damore argues that highly heritable personality traits including higher agreeableness and a preference for artistic jobs among women are responsible for gender gaps in tech, ignoring cultural explanations. By this logic, attempting to level the playing field for women is thus misguidedwe should be selecting candidates read men with the most desirable traits for high stress, technically demanding jobs. The Hollywood Reporter is your source for breaking news about Hollywood and entertainment, including movies, TV, reviews and industry blogs. Explore research at Microsoft, a site featuring the impact of research along with publications, products, downloads, and research careers. List the brokers you have had bad experiences with in the private placement business. Office Enterprise 2007 Pt Brokers ArkansasPerhaps its no coincidence that some evolutionary psychologists have expressed support for the idea of modern eugenics projects. While technology changes and the science evolves, the inclination to use biological differences as an excuse for discrimination remains the same. And while the Google screed focused largely on gender, many of these same arguments have been used to justify racism. I would argue in fact that the whole idea of whiteness and white supremacy wouldnt exist without science, Dr. Chanda Prescod Weinstein, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Washington, told Gizmodo, noting that the European Enlightenment spawned the now widely debunked field of scientific racism. As much as the Google employees anti diversity letter reeks of centuries old junk science, its important to emphasize that even today women, non binary people, and people of color in STEM fields are still regularly confronted with bigoted attitudes wrapped in a guise of biology. All too often, these people fear being blacklisted within their industry if they speak out against workplace discrimination. Oddly enough, the same white men who dominate tech industry in numbers seem to have convinced themselves theyre the ones whose status in the workplace is being threatened. Ironicallyas Damores manifesto and the subsequent fallout now illustratethey may be their own worst enemy.