> she hired at least a few women over men which she thought were better candidates simply because "we have to". That's a problem.
I don't have any problem with people having arbitrary standards which guide their hiring process. They could be hiring the worst candidates, and I don't care, it's their business, may be they want to do charity or whatever.
The problem I have is with the "have to" hire such and such, and when they start painting all of that bs as being some sort of scientific thing where if you don't follow suit not only doing what they say, but also agreeing with them, you are the scum of the earth.
The statistics probably are sound, but the conclusions drawn from them are another matter. Anyone that have been exposed to statistics to some degree know that statistics fallacies abound, people that inject their own prejudices to explain out the numbers also exist, and that analysing things with lots of variables is not easy.
For example, they claim "it's just fair" if they hired as much women as women graduate in IT related areas, and otherwise it means people hiring are biased against women. Well, that's just non-sense. What if women perform actually worse? If not so, what if most women don't want to work at Google, I've heard lot of "interesting" stories that don't make me that amused if that was the case. What if women want to work in other areas that aren't as prominent in Google and go to other places instead?
As I said, saying it's just bias is just a premisse disguissed as conclusion. Just shows the bias of the people coming to those conclusions.