【罪与罚】《经济学人》社论 - 再论谷歌性别歧视门 [英国媒体]

Not evil, just wrong

罪与罚

Google should not have given an outspoken engineer the sack

谷歌不应当将勇于发声的工程师开除

Larry Page, its co-founder, should have written a ringing, detailed rebuttal

谷歌联合创始人拉里·佩奇，应该写一份掷地有声、面面俱到的文章来反驳他

Aug 10th 2017  --17年8月10日



（2017年1月： 谷歌员工男女比例，三行分别为：非技术员工、管理层、技术员工）

THE talk in Silicon Valley just now is as likely to be about sex as software. Women in tech firms feel badly treated. And they are right: they rarely get the top jobs, they are sometimes paid less than men and many suffer unwanted sexual advances. Most of their male colleagues sympathise; at the same time some feel they cannot express unorthodox opinions on gender. And they are right, too: they can easily fall foul of written and unwritten rules, and face drastic consequences.

最近在硅谷谈论的话题中，性别这个话题可能和软件类话题一样被热捧，在科技公司工作的女性们感觉自己没有被友好对待，在某些方面，的确如此：女性很少就任热门职位，很多时候她们的薪水比男性低，且许多女性遭受过性骚扰。然而，许多男同胞们也有着同样的想法：他们同样觉得，自己不能在性别问题上仗义执言。他们的顾虑也没错：在性别问题上，他们很容易违反一些成文或不成文的规定，并遭致严重后果。

The charged atmosphere helps explain why “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”, a memo by a young software engineer, James Damore, has caused such a stir (see article). It says that the firm’s efforts to hire more women are biased. After circulating internally, it went viral. On August 7th Mr Damore was fired. To quote Sundar Pichai, Google’s boss, he advanced “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace”.

上述问题所带来的剑拔弩张的氛围，可以解释为何谷歌的一位年轻工程师詹姆斯·达莫尔所撰写的一封名为“谷歌意识形态的回音室效应”的内部文告，会引起如此轩然大波。在文告中他写道，公司雇佣更多女性的做法，是一种偏见。这封文告一开始在部门内部流转，随后被广泛转发。达莫尔在8月7日被公司开除，谷歌老板桑达尔·皮察给出的理由是，”他助长了公司内部性别成见的不良气焰“

Mr Pichai had good reasons to sack Mr Damore. One is the content of the memo. It says many reasonable-sounding things: that “we all have biases” and that “honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots”. But these are just camouflage before a stonking rhetorical “but”: the argument that innate differences, rather than sexism and discrimination, explain why women fare worse in the technology industry than men. “Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)”, Mr Damore writes, “may contribute…to the lower number of women in high-stress jobs.”

皮察有足够的理由开除达莫尔。首先是基于内部文告的内容。达莫尔在文告中列出了许多听起来合理的内容，譬如：”我们都带着有色眼镜“，”和意见不同者真诚讨论能帮助我们审视自身的不足“等，但这些都是他随后激进言论的烟幕弹，证据就是他认为与性别差异相比，女性为何在高科技行业表现不如男性，是因为女性天生就不如男性，他在文告中写道：”女性更神经质，更容易焦虑，不易承受压力，这些都将导致，在压力繁重的工作岗位，女性的比例会更低。“

Research has indeed shown some smallish group-level differences in personality and interests between the sexes. But drawing a line from this to women’s suitability for tech jobs is puerile. An unbiased eye would light on social factors rather than innate differences as the reason why only a fifth of computer engineers are women. Mr Damore claims women are “more interested in people than things” but, if this were true, they would in fact be better than men at the senior software-engineering jobs that involve managing teams. As for blind spots, although he repeatedly uses the words “discriminate” and “discrimination”, Mr Damore does so only to describe the unfairness to men of trying to hire more women.

研究已经表明，男女之间在群体水平层面，的确在个性和兴趣爱好方面存在微小的差异，但凭此就上纲上线地认为，女性不适合从事高科技工作，未免太过于草率。公平公正地看，为何女性在电脑工程师总人数比例只占1/5，这其中更多的是存在社会因素，而非天赋差异。达莫尔认为，女性更多地是对人感兴趣，而不是对事，但如果他所说的是正确的，这就恰恰证明了女性与男性相比，更适合高级软件工程师中的管理团队岗位。尽管达莫尔重复提及”歧视“和”歧视性“这些词藻，他这样做也只是为了表达，雇佣更多女性的行为对男性来说是不公平的，这也是他认知的局限性。

Mr Pichai also has legal arguments on his side. The American constitution protects free speech in public, but within a company’s walls that right is limited by what bosses deem acceptable. After Mr Damore had suggested they are less qualified because of their sex, women at Google could have refused to work with him and taken legal action. Moreover, he may have known that his memo would be seized on in Alt-Right circles (it got top billing on Breitbart and far-right websites).

其次就是，皮察这样做的确存在法律依据。美国宪法保护人们在公开场合言论自由的权利，但在公司内部，权利应在老板的承受范围内。达莫尔的文告中暗示，女性不能胜任岗位是由于他们的性别，会引发谷歌公司中女性的抵制，她们可能会拒绝与达莫尔一起工作并采取司法行动。更有甚者，达莫尔可能已知晓，他的文告可能会被极右翼团体所利用（譬如在Breitbart 《巴特新闻网》等一些极右翼网站已把文告内容登上头条）

Still, there was a better response to Mr Damore than immediately giving him the sack. Other firms may limit their workers’ speech, but the largest search engine, with a mission to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible”, should hold itself to a higher standard. It should not be suspected of limiting the debate of thorny subjects.

尽管上述种种，立刻将达莫尔开除也不是最优解。其他公司或许会存在限制员工发言权的现象，但谷歌公司作为世界上最大的搜索引擎，致力于”整理天下知，尽为人所用“的宏伟蓝图，理应追求一个更高境界，谷歌不应当为一些争议话题的讨论设置种种禁致

Speak up

广开言路

It would have been better for Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and the boss of Alphabet, its holding company, to write a ringing, detailed rebuttal of Mr Damore’s argument. Google could have stood up for its female employees while demonstrating the value of free speech. That might have led to the “honest discussion” Mr Damore claimed to want—and avoided the ersatz one about his firing. It would have shown that his arguments are not taboo, but mostly foolish and ill-informed. And it would have countered his more defensible claim: that Google, and the Valley, so welcoming of gender diversity, are narrower-minded about unorthodox opinions.

或许谷歌联合创始人，其母公司Alphabet的老板拉里·佩奇，应该写一份掷地有声、面面俱到的文章来反驳达莫尔的言论，这会是更好的做法。谷歌理应为其麾下女性员工挺身而出，展现言论自由的价值观，这或许就是达莫尔所宣称的”真诚讨论“的最高形态----而不是将他开除了事。达莫尔的言论并未触犯法律，但大部分内容都并不高明，也站不住脚，但谷歌将他开除的做法，反而会将他推向正义的一方：就是谷歌，以及整个硅谷，所谓的鼓励男女平等、多元化，却一点也不能包容反对言论