I looked up the Advice Memo [0] written by the NRLB (thanks tptacek for mentioning that document) so that I could try to see what exactly they found discriminatory about Damore's paper. This is the relevant section:
> The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.
The "these cases" reference is talking about a KKK member and someone who "made debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier". I don't see how Damore's memo is at all relatable to these.
And more importantly, the content they found to be discriminatory were the studies on differences in IQ and psycological traits by gender? How can presenting science be discriminatory?
If you disagree with some study, you explain why the methodology it used is bad or find other studies that try to explain it. You don't just claim that it's findings are discriminatory. That makes it impossible to discover why it's wrong (if it is).
You've lost the context of the Advice Memo. The NLRB isn't saying Damore himself violated EEO laws by writing the memo. The NLRB didn't fire Damore; Google did. The NLRB is saying that although the NLRA protects concerted action to improve working conditions, those protections do not extend to action that might discriminate against protected classes, and, crucially, that because employers are required by state and federal law to comply with EEO laws, the NLRB will tend not to second-guess them about how they do that.
The important thing to remember is that in most of the US, there's a presumption that employers can fire you for any reason. Employment is at-will. Damore was appealing to a specific exception to that rule.
That would be a narrow and incomplete reading of Damore's memo based on prejudice. Damore's description that on average men and women are different is not itself discriminatory or harmful since it's backed up by quite a lot of biological and psychometric science.
The question should have been "What is Damore advocating?".
And if they read the entire document then it would be clear that Damore was suggesting methods to bring Google's gender balance to 50/50 by making Google (and tech in general) more attractive to women by altering the software engineering culture to leverage inherent strengths that women (on average) possess.
No, the Advice Memo repeatedly notes that much of the memo is not objectionable. The problem Damore faced with the NLRB is that Google was careful to terminate him specifically and exclusively for the parts of the memo that would advocate policies problematic under EEO laws.
They read the whole memo (and indeed summarize a lot of it, not just the prejudicial bits).
> ~ statements about immutable traits linked to sex — such as women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution — were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding~ effort to cloak~ comments with "scientific" references and analysis, and notwtihstanding "not all women" disclaimers.
"Effort to cloak" and quotation marks around "scientific" are giving something away about the author.
> Moreover, the Charging Party reasonably should have known that the memorandum would likely be disseminated further, even beyond the workplace.
Damore "reasonably should have known" someone else was going to violate workplace confidentiality and code of conduct by leaking the document to the media? This seems like a failure of the employer not the employee.
> Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so.
This is the evidentiary component of the argument - which pivots on the not-so-reasonable "reasonably should have known" assertion.
Yes. Despite "limiting language" like "studies show" or "on average", the NLRB found that the Damore memo's claims that women are susceptible to "neuroticism" and that they have lower variance in IQ constituted valid cause for Google to terminate.
It's important I think to understand that the NLRB isn't saying that it's unlawful to write the Damore memo. They're not even saying that Damore's IQ and psychology claims violate EEO law. Instead, what they're saying is that they're close enough to the underlying issue of anti-discrimination compliance that the NLRB isn't going to second-guess Google's decision to terminate.
"It's important I think to understand that the NLRB isn't saying that it's unlawful to write the Damore memo."
Well, they did call what Damore wrote "sexual harassment" and "discriminatory", and sexual harassment is illegal and violates EEO, so that is basically saying that what he wrote is unlawful:
"The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences
between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct
the Board found unprotected in these cases. [His] statements about immutable traits
linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the
top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment,
notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and
analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers."
It is probably not generally unlawful for a rank-and-file employee to make discriminatory statements. You can be fired for doing that, but the government is unlikely to step in and do that for your employer.
Not directly, no. But a company can be held liable if it isn't taking action against discrimination perpetuated by the rank-and-file (whether that be education on the subject, disciplinary action, firing, etc).
> “Much of" Damore’s memo was probably protected under the law. ... But ... Google discharged Damore only for his "discriminatory statements," which aren’t shielded by labor law.
Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.
People really did exaggerate how bad the memo really was. That said, it definitely has portions that brought up stereotypes without citing direct evidence, like how men have a higher drive to achieve status. Google considered these statements "discriminatory," which sounded reasonable enough to the NLRB. It doesn't matter whether these statements were actually discriminatory because they clearly fall outside the bounds of protected speech.
He cited multiple academic sources to back up the claims made about gender. He also belabored the point that averages and general trends of a demographic should not be used to make judgements about individual members of the demographic.
This is exactly what happens in academia all of the time, when you have factions who believe in competing ideas. Side A thinks that logic and rationality and the data is on their side, and that side B stretches the facts and don't have support for their claims, and vice versa for side B.
Are all of these issues in academia settled which you refer to? Or is it that, maybe, Damore accepted side Bs views, whereas you accept side As views, but this isn't settle in academia?
Could you point out, perhaps, the most offensive, non-supported statement that Damore had in his memo?
Is it a good breakdown? The author seems awfully bought into the narrative of power structures being the dominant reason for sex differences, and is obviously extremely angry. Hardly an unbiased observer.
Yes, the author makes a point that Damore's memo 'makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy'. Does it really? That seems a bit silly and I didn't read anything like that in the memo. It makes me suspect other parts of the rebuttal.
I agree Damore's sources were unconvincing, but I've searched for sources disputing one of his most controversial claims (that women are more "neurotic" - an unfortunately named Big Five personality trait - than men) and haven't found any.
The Big Five is getting outdated. It was a popular method in the 90's, but doesn't hold up today for biological factor analysis because its lexical nature opens it to social biases:
>And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.
The big five can still be used for self-reported correlational analysis, but Damore used it in an argument against social constructs, when the method itself can be heavily biased by the social constructs he's arguing against.
His statements were within the mainstream interpretations of modern clinical psychology and evolutionary biology. That doesn't make them certain facts by any means, but it's important that we not misrepresent things here.
No, I'm responding to the claim in the comment above that Damore made statements "without citing direct evidence".
Though it is probably true that the lawyers in the case didn't read the citations. It wasn't their job to determine whether Damore's statements were scientifically accurate, and they stated that his statements were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, regardless of the scientific references and
analysis.
> Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.
No, it doesn't.
Because the interpretation of the firing company doesn't determine the legality. Whether, on the evidence, a firing is solely due to actually legally unprotected statements (not statements that the employer chooses to misconstrue as unprotected) is.
Yes, but (IANAL) if the employee suspects that there was an illegal reason behind it, they can probably sue and subpoena documents revealing management motivations.
Like, sure, a manager could wake up and just fire you because they were grumpy. But if it is discovered that there was internal communications about their political opinions leading up to it, then there would be a case.
Yes, but there are still prohibited reasons for firing. Which labor organizing is one of; Damore charged that he was fired for organizing, the NLRB found that Google fired him for actions that fall outside of protected labor organizing.
Yes, but not if you're trying to organize to improve working conditions, because this is protected by the NRLA.
If the NRLA believes only parts of Damore's memo were working towards improving working conditions and other parts were working to discriminate against women, which part is which.
To someone that agrees with Damore, it looks like everyone mischaracterized his effort to improve working conditions as sexism. Then Google was able to use that as cover to fire him for protected organizing.
Allow me to suggest that both Google and the NLRB understood Damore's claim, and that any misunderstanding falls on the side of those who disagree with what they found.
But, I haven't read exactly what the NRLA found to be discriminatory. This would help anyone that is legitimately trying to improve working conditions and trying not to promote discrimination.
I agree. If being mistaken as the wrong gender causes someone significant enough distress to make them commit suicide, they need (and likely are getting) serious mental health attention.
It is not the burden of anyone to cater to a stranger's mental illness. If you look vaguely male, I will say "excuse me sir, could I get past you?" (and "madam" for a vaguely female looking person). And there is no place where that should be illegal or morally wrong.
Deliberate misgendering is definitely a separate discussion from a genuine mistake.
I get misgendered all the time, and I'm just some guy who never recovered from the 80's and 90's and still sports a ponytail. Once in South Carolina, I got, "Uh, sir, uh, ma'am, uh,..." -- That checkout guy never made up his mind!
OP is talking about comparing families specifically. This talking point doesn't mean anything on the level of a single taxpayer.
You could argue that the family in Texas is getting more services for their tax dollar. But, that is almost certainly false, because people who actually make enough to pay taxes don't tend to consume the kind of services that cost tons of money (aka. social services).
Wealth is relative. "In the bay area" is absolutely relevant. Companies in SF pay so much because the cost of living is so high. Someone with $20 is not richer than someone with $10 if it costs the first person $15 to buy lunch and it costs the second person $2 to buy the equivalent lunch.
I realize that cost of living has an impact on wealth.
But, we're talking about taxes and mostly about a couple specific provisions: SALT deduction, mortgage interest deduction, and the higher-end tax rate. Relative wealth is definitely not relevant to the SALT and mortgage interest deductions. (To review, the mortgage interest deduction subsidizes the rich and the SALT deduction forces people in low tax states to subsidize people in high tax states)
The only one left is tax brackets. You could argue that tax brackets should take into account cost of living. So, if you earn 100k in Nebraska you'd pay a higher percentage of that than a similar person living in SF. But, I think that doesn't take into account the fact that SF is such an in-demand place to live. You don't have to live in SF. Basically, I'm not convinced that cost of living differences should play a role in taxes.
> The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.
The "these cases" reference is talking about a KKK member and someone who "made debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier". I don't see how Damore's memo is at all relatable to these.
And more importantly, the content they found to be discriminatory were the studies on differences in IQ and psycological traits by gender? How can presenting science be discriminatory?
If you disagree with some study, you explain why the methodology it used is bad or find other studies that try to explain it. You don't just claim that it's findings are discriminatory. That makes it impossible to discover why it's wrong (if it is).
[0] (PDF) http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391