mwytock

Thanks for the play-by-play! I do disagree about winning/losing. I feel I've done a good job representing my views.

I fixed the typo in my statement, sorry for the confusion.

As I said, the fact that this memo is offensive to many people is evidenced by the huge outrage. I'm not sure how that is a controversial statement.

See citation above. I'm saying its much too strong a claim to go from this paper to the conclusion that women are biologically less inclined to engineering.

EDIT: To be consistent with my original statement (see child)

You made a blanket statement about discussing offensive things and I wanted to point out there are some limits, especially at the workplace.

In this particular case, I feel that leadership and everyone who disagreed with the memo should have at least stated explicitly (if briefly) what the flaws in the reasoning were, as I tried to do at the beginning of this thread.

Obviously, my explanation was not sufficient to convince you and you are still holding on to the belief that women are biologically ill-suited to be engineers. But at least now I have tried to make it clear to you where I think you are wrong. Thats pretty much all you can accomplish on some issues.

Well, saying things that are clearly wrong and offensive to large numbers of people is typically looked down upon amongst educated people and highly discouraged at the workplace.

For example, think of other stereotypes about other groups (blacks, hispanics, jews) and think about what the response would be if an employee was publishing 10 page manifestos with loosely connected scientific arguments in support of these views.

Maybe. I don't think Sundar Pichai or Danielle Brown did though, they just said "this is not OK" and "code of conduct". Perhaps they felt they didn't need to engage with this kind of argument, but that mentality is exactly what has a lot of people upset.

I see. Well I'm saying it does not. Obviously we disagree about what the scientific research says.

I'm not sure what the contradiction is here?

Also, I wasn't making any claim about my own feelings, the massive response shows that the memo was highly offensive to many people.

You're right, my one sentence is just trying to explain the basic point to people who may not get it. Its not trying to lay out a complete thesis in support. I'm not sure if thats a necessary exercise, especially for the CEO.

I'm not sure what you are arguing, can you be more explicit? You're saying that you agree with the fundamental point of the memo?

A lot of people on "our side" did a bad job of simply refuting the argument presented. Its straightforward to do in one sentence:

"While there may be scientific evidence of differences between men and women, using these differences to conclude that women are biologically less inclined to engineering is a gross leap in reasoning that is not at all supported by the facts."

Then you can go on and explain why for historical and societal reasons putting forth this weak theory is highly offensive and damaging to a large group of people.

Of course, many feel that you shouldn't _have_ to explain this to people, but unfortunately in todays environment, you do!

I agree that the document blurs the line between preference/aptitude and is not totally clear which is one of the reasons overall it is a mess.

Nonetheless, many of the statements in "Personality differences", "Men's higher drive for status", and "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap", especially the stuff about women being more prone to anxiety, liking part-time work, caring more about people than things, etc. speak strongly to aptitude for engineering, given the context of the document.

EDIT: Also, I reject the implication that the claim "women have less of a preference for engineering" is not in and of itself a harmful stereotype.

Well said, it's a massive leap to go from biological gender differences to differences in aptitude for engineering.

The gross oversimplified claims from the document that attempt to make this leap are textbook stereotypes.