After reading about Googles newfound realization of a huge gender gap within their company as well as other tech companies it raises some questions and thoughts. The article NYTimes: Exposing Hidden Biases at Google to Improve Diversity discussed Googles thoughts and part of its plans for change. Thoughts that come to my head are whether the company really cares, after never even realizing it or at least not caring, the company has obvious discrimination. Another thought is will Google make a drastic effort to fix their gender gap and hire at more of a one to one ratio specifically, turning down males to balance out the gender ratio? Thirdly this article and Googles effort to try and make a change is exciting to see, any change to make things more diverse and equal is a good shift. Unfortunately what this article and the statistics of gender and race diversity within major tech businesses portrays is that even in our most intelligent and forward thinking areas of society there is a clear discrimination which can only display the underlying discrimination across our society.
Google is approaching its gender gap with workshops that are supposed to work with the Google employees to tackle unconscious bias. Once people are more open and accepting they believe that the gap should close and a greater diversity will emerge. The belief is that once people see the hidden discrimination that occurs they will see how prevalent it is and will be able to make a conscious effort to fight these biases. With a 70% male work force Google has a clear gender gap which is not representative of the population at all. Google is approach in this problem due to it being morally right and also because research has shown that more diverse work forces are able to be more creative than homogenous ones. I do not know how Google decides on applications and with its hiring but it is just logical that the work force should be decided upon by their qualifications and the skill they have, I highly doubt that most of the 70% of males at google are really more qualified than the many women not filling these positions. An even greater issue is that men make up 83 percent of its engineering employees and 79 percent of its managers. This statistic shows a clear gap in opportunities and positions given to women at the companies when they're already a minority in the work place. One anecdote of Google was that a panel of men were deciding on the promotion of a women and when they were brought to realize that they might not have the point of view of a woman and they realized how unequal it is to have a group of white men deciding on the fates of women and other minorities. All in all something needs to be done to balance out the numbers in Google and other tech businesses with similar gender and racial gaps because it is plain unfair and wrong to not have equal opportunity and representation. Th fact that Google is trying to make a move is great but the change must be strong and needs to occur everywhere or else nothing will really change and this unconscious discrimination and imbalance is throughout all of society.
