Equity Practices
October 20, 2024
In the early 1900s, if you were a woman who wanted to work, people would laugh and tell you to stay at home. In the 2000s, working is a normal expectation to have of all young people. However, the statistics show that in 2024, there is still a gap in the number of women in the workforce, especially in STEM fields. The big question is:
Is the gender gap indicative of a systematic issue that requires corrective action today?
Most organizations (government, industry, academia), answer with a resounding "Yes." The belief is that there is a fault in the system that has ignored, discouraged, or directly prevented women from pursuing STEM careers. That's why the front page of Girls Who Code says "REACHING 5 MILLION GIRLS, WOMEN, AND NON-BINARY PEOPLE BY 2030."
But what I see from this is that these organizations are treating girls, women, and non-binary people as a quota to fulfill. Even if the gender gap was caused by a systematic issue 100 years ago where women were explicitly denied career options, we are undergoing a cultural change as a new generation of people replace the old. The kind of concerns which may factor into a girl's decision to not pursue, say, software engineering, more resemble "Hmm, do I really want to be surrounded by tech bros all the time?" rather than "Nobody would hire a woman." In today's world, you're allowed to make your own choice as an adult1.
This goes beyond the gender gap in STEM. I argue that diversity-based programs today are causing more harm than good by enforcing "othering" and undermining American meritocratic values.
First, let's observe how the culture around diversity at University of Michigan has developed after expanding their DEI efforts. From this New York Times article last week:
D.E.I. at Michigan is rooted in a struggle for racial integration that began more than a half-century ago, but many Black students today regard the school’s expansive program as a well-meaning failure. The university now has a greater proportion of Hispanic, Asian and first-generation students and a more racially diverse staff. But in a state where 14 percent of residents are Black, the school’s Black undergraduate enrollment has long hovered stubbornly at around 4 percent, before ticking up just past 5 percent this fall. Princess-J’Maria Mboup, the speaker of the university’s Black Student Union... called Michigan’s efforts “superficial.” For all their spread and reach, she told me, the school’s D.E.I. programs betrayed “a general discomfort with naming Blackness explicitly.”
So while the enrollment demographics have changed in the past decade, which may or may not be confounded by other socioeconomic factors, DEI is not reaching a crucial important goal of increasing Black enrollment and making Blacks feel welcome.
Eric Fretz, teacher of a popular class on entrepreneurship, was the subject of a Title IX discrimination complaint by a student in 2021 in which no grounds for punishment were found. He sees a “gotcha culture” on campus: “It’s like giving a bunch of 6-year-olds Tasers.”
Having increased student awareness of discriminatory protection laws seems good, but not when it is used to attack instead of defend oneself, causing unnecessary damage to the reputation of well-meaning professors.
Honestly, it seems that the increase in diversity efforts is causing the culture to crumble.
While these programs are successful in increasing the admittance and employment of minorities in the short term, there is a deeper impact that is not immediately reflected in the numbers. Programs with gender/ethnic eligibility requirements are enforcing the separation of groups. Those who are not eligible feel excluded, and those who have been part of these programs may feel that they are not as qualified as their peers because they were only admitted so their organization can wave the diversity flag.
There are others who have pointed this out, most notably James Damore's "Google Memo" in 2017, but they were quickly criticized as being pro-male/White/Asian. As someone who has participated and benefitted from several diversity programs, I want to emphasize that, from my experience, the rates of impostor syndrome is especially high among diversity participants. In addition, I and most people who I have met in these programs have never personally experienced harsh discrimination or truly difficult circumstances. Sure, if you require an essay about it, I could tell you about how I juggled my familial responsibilities and tutoring 20 hours a week on top of schoolwork— but clearly, I already have the intrinsic motivation and support from friends and family to do well in school and pursue the career I want.
This doesn't mean I want to stop all support programs. I wholeheartedly believe in programs that help pay tuition, create a positive community, and provide career advice to students who are economically disadvantaged and/or have lacked a support network growing up. What I am pointing out is that competitive areas like the Bay Area are overflowing with diversity programs while the places that could benefit the most from these programs are where they are least available.
I am calling for organizations to be smarter about what they want to accomplish. Instead of reaching out to underrepresented students who are already in top universities, why not consider promoting more heavily to community colleges with low transfer/graduation rates, for example? In this way, I believe the goal criteria for equity desperately needs a fundamental change. I argue that we should measure openness— whether people feel welcome and comfortable choosing to be in a given field— instead of targeting quotas, treating people with different genders or ethnicities like rare Pokemon. Ironically, much of the language used by diversity groups feels more harmful than inclusive.
"The gender gap in tech has been getting worse, but Girls Who Code is changing that. Our alumni go on to major in Computer Science at 7X the national average."
Diversity groups like to frame "the gender gap" as a dire issue like climate change. If we define gender gap as the problem though, there's technically another solution to that, which is to decrease the number of males in tech. That aside, statements like this are effective as advertisements, presenting themselves as a pipeline program to be funded by other organizations. If you are a DEI leader at a company interested in increasing diversity, numbers like "7X the national average" are extremely attractive because you need to funnel more underrepresented students into interns into full time employees and report the results of your efforts to the higher-ups. As a high schooler or first-year undergrad desperate for an internship, of course this sounds very attractive as well. After that though, as a woman already in tech, I am extremely off-put by this statement. It's not that I don't want more girls to join tech. It's that I would hope that these girls are joining tech because they truly want to, not because it was the first easy pipeline program into a decently-paying job they found. I actually believe the fact that they use the "7X" figure is telling of this. I would expect that 99% of students who join a career-oriented coding club would be there to pursue computer science, not whatever "7X the national average" is which I imagine is not very high.
Having a gender gap or skewed demographics is not inherently bad. It certainly creates a different kind of culture, but that is up to the organization. Organizations ought to stop framing culture as a quantity problem and admit that there is a lot more variability to what makes up a workforce than their demographics, just as we agree there's more to a person's resume than what university they graduated from. Instead, a diverse workforce should be a symptom of the true objective of making every workplace a welcoming and comfortable environment where people want to be.
1 To some (small) extent, we now have the same but opposite problem where parents are still taking away the choice from their kids by coaxing them to become engineers or doctors. I don't imagine this will ever completely go away though.