Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a woman I can say "women are less inclined to be engineers" is only a skip and hop away from "women are not suited to be engineers. I would say don't even bother with the biological argument because as a woman you likely know all too well how it's mainly used. Anyway, its not really the business of a company to argue such abstract matters. It's one thing to be teased about these things but it's another to have peo…
So, honest question. Suppose you work at a hospital, and 70% of the nurses are women. And you're coming under fire, and a lawsuit is pending, because this indicates discrimination. Now suppose a coworker writes a piece saying roughly "Way fewer men apply for these positions. I suspect men are less interested in being nurses, so we have fewer male nurses, but we can't lower the bar just to make it 50-50. I think it's…
So we know that according to the memo that Google seeks to reduce the number of "false negative" rejections of diversity candidates by paying more attention to those applications. This could be to help counteract discrimination that occurs during the process. This ends up with about 20% qualified women in these positions.
There is nothing here to indicate that the bar is being lowered (the interview process is just as grueling) or that 50-50 is the aim. But if men were being discriminated at when trying to get these nurses jobs, I'd have no problem whatsoever with the respective companies trying to reduce the number of false negatives during the hiring process. Or even just trying to hire more men to create an environment of more diversity among nurses. Those men who are hired there are still there because they want the job and are qualified to do it.
The problem with the biological argument is that historically it hasn't been used to say that "women are not inclined to do x,y,z" but rather "women are not suited to do it". So if there was a historical parallel with nursing and men and people in the past did not think they were capable of doing this job - I'd say people should be more sensitive about what they say in the work environment in our modern day.
A - Generally no, but if the memo was broadcast to the whole company and touched on this points due to the reasons expressed above - I think its ok for the company to take action in the way it deems appropriate.
B - Could be, if that was the prevailing belief system. Realistically though, its not a true parallel because I don't think many people believe that men are not capable of being nurses.
C - Not sure what this means. Whether they are biological factors or social ones should not be something thats asserted by a company. That's going into way too grey territory imo.