Women Are Not Suited For Tech Jobs For ‘Biological’ Reasons Says Google Executive 

At a time when the world's most powerful women in tech (Forbes list) are breaking the glass ceiling, a Google executive has cited ‘’biological’ reasons for a lack of tech sense in women when compared to men who according to him also have a ‘higher drive for status’.

The executive’s document, which has been doing its rounds inside Google offices for some time, was made public by Motherboard on Saturday. Recode and Gizmodo published the document in full.

Google lost no time in condemning the assertions and defending Google's diversity initiatives with its diversity vice president Danielle Brown and engineering vice president Ari Balogh addressing the controversial document in separate messages to Google employees. "[I]t's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages," Brown said.

The executive who argued “we need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism” alleged that the biological differences between men and women “aren’t just socially constructed” but “universal across human cultures”.

“They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone.”

The document by the rank-and-file software engineer at Google went viral on social media and sparked a fierce debate. Alleging “personality differences” between men and women, the executive said women lean more towards “aesthetics” rather than “ideas” and have a “stronger interest in people rather than things” relative to men. This explains why women “prefer jobs in social or artistic areas” and men “may like coding”.

The author wrote that higher rates of anxiety disorders among women may explain why there are "lower numbers of women in high stress jobs."

He also said he believes that Google's commitment to hire more women stands to make the company less competitive, and that the gender wage gap is a myth.

Though Brown termed the document as an alternative view, she said: "Like many of you, I found that [the document] advanced incorrect assumptions about gender."

But Balogh, the engineering boss, said such "stereotyping" that is "deeply troubling" and "harmful."