Now THIS is the appropriate response.
I have no idea what percentage of women vs men have the potential to become an engineer and what percentage of those people have the desire to do so. It would really help to know that ratio so we have a better goal post of how many women it would take to reflect society.
The plain truth is that during my 25+ years as a computer programmer I’ve worked with more than the average number of women than most tech people have and with a single exception, all were more than qualified to do the job and some were superior at their jobs to me doing mine.
I’m going to assume that most, if not in fact all, of the women that google has hired are actually qualified for their job in the same way that the men hired are. It’s possible they are not “the” best candidate based on some arbitrary set of qualities, but I’m reasonably sure that they are well aware of the problems related to hiring someone who is actually unqualified can bring. And if they happened to come across a truly exceptional male they will likely create a slot to hold on to them both rather than waste the opportunity to hire them.
There is a reason why many companies prefer to limit their hires to people with enough experience to show at least basic competence and that’s to avoid the “embarrassment“ of having to justify their termination to avoid lawsuits and a tarnished reputation.
