Question

2. Last summer a Google engineer was fired for a controversial memo he sent to various internal Google project groups suggesting that the low number of female coders had less to do with bias against women and more with the nature of the female brain. Essentially, he claimed, women aren't as interested in coding as men are. This eventually led to a public backlash against Google with demands to sack the engineer. In August, the engineer was terminated and now is suing Google on the basis of systematic discrimination against white males. From the short description above, you can see how complex this drama has become. Does the Identity Argument provide us with additional tools to evaluate this controversy beyond what conventional ethics offers? If you think it does, use the identity argument as an ethical tool to summarize what you think are the main moral features in the controversy. If you are not convinced we can effectively use the identity argument to sort through moral dilemmas, use the Google controversy to highlight weaknesses in the identity argument. Follow the link below to read the latest developments on the Google drama: Google drama

Answer 1

According to the ethical principles of the company no company can discriminate between man and women. The remark of the engineer is considered unethical as it indicates the discrimination. It appears to be insulting to the women. Therefore the Google is forced to terminate the engineer.

But the Google engineer made the comment on the basis of the statistics. In this respect he is not wrong. He did not make the comment from the personal point of view. It was the record of the company.

A company evaluates the employees by coding. There are other systems of rating the employees. The responsibility, punctuality, diligence, skill, knowledge etc are also considered for coding an employee.

From the moral point of view it is not ethical. The engineer's comment shows his personal prejudice. He should consider the employees as employee only, not by male or female. The engineer makes a sharp distinction between male and female and encourages gender discrimination.

Identity argument is problematic. It causes many problems. Here the engineer made the identity argument on the basis of men and women. Therefore it appears to be unethical in the modern perspective.