[dguaraglia]

This is the same argument currently used against affirmative action programs across the US: "doesn't this discriminate against white people who could be qualified to get accepted into the same position /scholarship?"

It's a disingenuous argument which doesn't take into consideration the whole history of why the program exists in the first place. Not only that, by trying to justify it on biological terms, the author introduces the supposed existence of an inherent bias that Google is supposedly trying to ignore.

How about we try to achieve 1-1 parity with society's distribution and if after 30 years of encouraging people of all genders to participate in all professions there's solid evidence that some people don't care for X or Y reason, then we let the problem take care of itself? I mean if we truly are aiming for non-discrimination, that should be the metric, right?

[cm2187]

It is only a disingenuous argument if you are convinced that the gender imbalance is the result of a discrimination in the first place, which you seem to be quite certain it is.

Unlike the guy from Google, I won't speculate on the reasons but there are many gender imbalances that are clearly not the result of a discrimination. For instance a large majority of med and law students (80% in the case of law) in France are women. These are not low skill/low pay/low prestige professions, and I am not aware that there is any discrimination against men in these schools (nor that anyone complained there would). In the school of engineering I went to, the proportion was the reverse (20% women). Selection is purely based on a math and physics exam, very little room for discrimination either. Naturally this male/female imbalance makes its way from university to the profession.

I can't say exactly why we have these imbalances, there might be many reasons, some may be cultural, some may be biological, I don't know, and I very much doubt anyone on HN can pretend to have an authoritative answer, but I also very much doubt it has to do with discrimination.

[dguaraglia]

> It is only a disingenuous argument if you are convinced that the gender imbalance is the result of a discrimination in the first place, which you seem to be quite certain it is.

Then you proceed to write two paragraphs essentially supporting my position that we really don't understand why the imbalances exist. But somehow, this guy stating as a matter of fact that it's a biological thing is not disingenuous. I'm not sure how you can hold both beliefs.

[yorwba]

> But somehow, this guy stating as a matter of fact that it's a biological thing is not disingenuous.

Can you point me to where he states this? The closest I found was

I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

which is still very much in the "we don't understand, but maybe this is an explanation" camp.

[dguaraglia]

You do realize that section only focuses on genetic traits and completely ignores cultural context, right? Why do you think that is?

[yorwba]

From the memo:

Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.

Because he thinks the focus on cultural context ignores some aspects of the problem and leads to bad decisions? I mean, I disagree with his conclusions, but I don't think he is trying to be deliberately misleading.