I admit that I read everything surrounding it and not the original document before commenting here. That’s a rare moment for me as I usually RTFA before commenting. I’ve now read it, thank you for calling me out on that.
That said, I don’t think it’s a textbook example of civil discourse to be circulating this within your own organization. When one side suggests “distributions of differences” are root causes (without diving into them and first principals), it takes all the oxygen out of the room. It makes for a very uncivil situation for colleagues to have to defend their own gender.
Cloaking false information inside of distributions and using the word “different” doesn’t mean somehow that the expressed opinions are fair, unbiased, or rooted in some truth. It clearly implied that we shouldn’t expect an equal distribution of men and women in tech because women “on average” aren’t as well suited for the job. Bullshit.
I’ve seen myself male dominated teams that create their own monoculture that makes it hard for an outsider to enter. I’ve been part of such teams at Google! It’s not necessarily the fault of the people on the team, and for the most part people seemed to want to accept others. But I did encounter moments of racism, sexism, and homophobia that were quite shocking to me. And I’m a white male, so presumably people felt “comfortable” with me there enough to express it. Can you imagine being be a woman of color and trying to feel welcome? And this was a less bro-y team. Being gay I felt very uncomfortable with it, but at least they automatically gave me an intellectual pass due to the “distributions” I come from.
We need to look at individuals and not distributions to bring a class up. Over time societal forces change, which will affect such “averages.” It used to be that on average, women didn’t work outside the come. That’s no longer true. It used to be that on average, women made far far less than men. That’s no longer true (but still not equal.) Things are dynamic, so by trying to hide under statistics we ignore the potential (and necessity) for change. This article _implies_ that females inherently inferior for high-level Google/tech jobs (or things that deal with “ideas”... so insulting)... and that’s just plain wrong.
Some ideas do. For example, Nazi’s master race idea hurt badly.
However, I don’t see how that’s relevant. The author of that memo didn’t wrote about male superiority of anything similar. He talked about statistically significant differences, and proposed ideas for google to attract more female employees without discriminating against males.
Make a valid counter-argument or bug off. Downvoting opinions you don't agree with is reddit-level hive mind. Make a stance and don't hide behind your ability to downvote.
Guessing you’re not a minority in anyway. When others who aren’t a member of your class tell you anything that’s inherent to your class DOES hurt people... such ideas are often used to restrict what you can do or set you up for failure in society in a particular way because ideas spread. They also do a lot of internal self-harm just from being expressed by others.
It’s bad enough to get that in life in general, but then to get it at work as well....
I get this is a sensitive topic, but don't try to discount my opinion by claiming I don't have the necessary experience or vantage point. You know nothing about me.
You asked for a substantive reply given the downvotes by others, and I gave you one. Are you going to reply to it or focus on the guess (which I called out as a guess... hardly an assumption).