Google fires author of ‘gender gap’ treatise
San Francisco — Google on Monday fired the author of an internal memo defending the gender gap in Silicon Valley tech jobs as a matter of biology, according to media reports. The move, which was not officially confirmed by Google, splashed fuel on a burning controversy about whether "political correctness" at the company was stifling free speech. Google said the company "can’t comment on individual employee cases". In an e-mail to employees, Google CE Sundar Pichai supported the right of employees to express themselves, saying that much of what was in the memo was fair to debate, according to a copy of the message obtained by AFP. "However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace," Pichai said in the e-mail. "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK." Pichai noted that the company code of conduct called for "Googler...
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