He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.
If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.
The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level.
If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar.
I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be.
It's not about self-doubt, it's about creating a stereotype by which other people (managers, peers) will prejudge you even before you write the first line of code. This prejudice already exists as is, Damore's memo doesn't do anything to help it. If improving women's opportunities at Google was his objective, he failed miserably at it.
If I felt the memo implied or created that stereotype I'd denounce it as well.
It is widely acknowledged that there are social factors that might affect the number of women entering the field. He could've made as valid an argument about the hiring practices affecting diversity, without bringing up the supposed "biological" factor altogether. Not bringing it up would have probably put him in the right side of the Code of Conduct.
At best, it was poor judgement for him to bring it up when it didn't add anything to the conversation. At worst, it betrays a certain level of misogyny. Those of us who tend to assume the worst, might be more inclined to believe the latter, but I wouldn't blame people for believing the former.
One takeaway I have from this is that discussion about biological differences between sexes is often misused, so should be avoided in discussion related to diversity if you want people to not form an emotional reaction.
The whole thing was a meandering stroll of possible reasons. I absolutely don't see this memo creating a hostile workplace or illiciting the pushback it has garnered simply by what I read in the text. I read a document referencing population level differences between sexes(relevant in the context of attempting to explain differences in preferences that account for the difference in size of the groups) that have no bearing on individual differences between sexes(not even slightly relevant in hiring)
My internal reader probably filled in the benefit of the doubt.
Right! There's been enough people using biological differences as excuses for all kinds of things before, so it's probably better to resort to that argument only once all other factors have been removed. I believe that's one of the biggest reasons people reacted so badly to this memo. It certainly was the first thing that popped into my head as soon as I started reading his reasoning.
A bit of context is important. Anonymity on the internet has facilitated a rebirth of the "men's rights" movement. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a place for "men's rights" when it comes to recognizing that sexual abuse happens to men too, which is what some of the groups got started, but some of the notorious forums (like the now banned "TheRedPill" subreddit) are virulently misogynistic. There are people openly defending rape, calling women "inferior" and posting fantasies about what they'd do to women who they perceive as "pushy" or holding some power over them. Feminists are demonized to no end. A lot of the rationalization around their rhetoric builds on some of the same bases Damore used for his "biological argument." I'll leave it to your judgment to decide if Damore giving one of his interviews to Stefan Molyneaux - known men's right activist - has anything to do with that or not.
It's that context that made my internal reader go for the worst possible scenario instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. I guess I'm way more jaded person than you :)
If you knew there were a lower bar for people who had red hair, for example, because there's a pay gap and their population ratio isn't represented equally, every time you'd have someone on your team with red hair, you'd wonder if they were there because of the exception made for them or if they got there on pure merit. Thus, affirmative action causes people to question that merit (bias).
Worse, the redhead who got in never knows if they got accepted based on merit or based on some quota, which contributes heavily Impostor syndrome, negative self image and confirmation bias based on that negative self image.
You combine these two things over time and there is absolutely an impact.
Damore's ultimate points were: let's discuss this and, by the way, please don't ignore me just because my opinion is unpopular.
The memo specifically targeted diversity hires as a lower bar. Imagine if a memo started circulating that asked everyone to question whether or not you were hired for your skill. That's a terrible environment to create.
On the contrary, there is evidence of bias against women, which logically means that the bar is lower for men by default.
> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have?
Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem.
From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.
Totally different interpretations of cause and effect.