[engel]

He says that if 10% of men and 8% of women are suitable for tech, and google hires unbiased from suitable people, then google should expect a 55:45 gender gap.

That doesn't mean that the female colleagues are unsuitable for tech, since they were exactly hired among people who were suitable.

He is also not saying that this explains the complete gender gap, just that there is no point in blindly aiming at 50:50 without considering research on the underlying distribution.

He may have the research wrong, but otherwise the point seems to stand?

EDIT: Of course, this argument only works for a binary 'suitable/not suitable' distinction. If 'tech talent' was said to be normal distributed, with men having a slightly higher expectation, it would follow that the average men above some cut was also better than the average woman above the same cut. So in that way he does attack his colleagues.

[ocdtrekkie]

This is still misrepresenting. He said those gender-based tendencies lead men and women to prefer and be interested in different things. Preference and interest has nothing to do with "suitability".

To say that 100% of men and women are suitable to work in tech, but that maybe only 20-30% of the women would actually want to would be a more accurate representation of what he wrote.

It's hard to see what's sexist about suggesting women should work wherever they prefer to, rather than being told they should become software engineers.

[egonschiele]

That makes sense. My next question would be:

> He says that if 10% of men and 8% of women are suitable for tech

Why would a higher % of men be more suitable for tech? In the paper he suggests it is partly due to biological differences. Do you agree with that?

[davidsong]

Depends on what you deem suitable. If you're aiming to get people who have a strong desire for exploring and creating systems then you'd likely end up with more people with Aspergic traits, a majority of which are male.