Eric Rogstad
Aug 8, 2017 · 1 min read

I think that this is an unfair mischaracterization.

My read is that he’s arguing about which policies for promoting diversity are appropriate, and what limits there are on how successful we should expect them to be.

To see what I mean, contrast, “stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers” with:

- “I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions.”

- “Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.”

- “Below I’ll go over some of the differences in distribution of traits between men and women that I outlined in the previous section and suggest ways to address them to increase women’s representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination.”

- “I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.”

- “I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority.”

- “I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).”