That One Google Engineer Who Criticized Diversity Policy

[Crystal]

This has been all over my social media lately, so I was rather curious what people would think about it. Here's a brief summary of the situation.

Google has been put under a lot of pressure regarding gender diversity lately and has been putting in new processes to achieve equality and diversity goals. In the midst of that, one of their engineers wrote and circulated an internal memo criticizing their methods. It's an interesting read. He focuses on gender (although Google also has various programs focusing on LGBT and racial diversity), makes a number of (true? not true? but definitely a little brow-raising) stereotyping statements about the differences between men and women, and takes a shot at the company culture for repressing and shaming more conservative viewpoints. To his credit he does seem to be trying to have a civil discussion, but it's a touchy subject and he's not terribly tactful.

The memo is leaked - naturally - and becomes an absolute PR disaster. Google's CEO cuts short his vacation, flies home, and the engineer is summarily fired, likely in part for PR and management reasons but unfortunately proving his point about conservative viewpoint repression to the masses.

Here it is in full.
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

What do you think? Should the man have been fired? Did he bring up points you consider reasonable, or was his piece complete sexist bull? What do you feel about the Silicon Valley echo chamber and diversity policies in business?

[Shinko]

Hm. Making bulletpoints of my thoughts as I read through.

-I'm a bit confused why compassion for the weak and respect for the strong/authority are being presented as mutually exclusive. They're not.

-I do agree that in general humans are inherently competitive. That's absolutely the truth- animals in general are inherently competitive, it's a survival adaptation. Buuuut being inherently something doesn't mean you have to kowtow to instinct either. Humans are not slaves to our basic drives- the decision to be cooperative or competitive is exactly that; a decision.

-Women have difficulty negotiating raises and salary because of the glass ceiling and the assumption that women, being childbearers and nurturers, are more likely to take time off for pregnancies or to tend to ill children. This is why in a job interview women will get the question "do you want to have a family?" or something along those lines, but men generally don't. (Although of course legally we aren't obligated to answer the question, the point still stands. Issues with negotiating raises have nothing to do with conflict-avoidance, at least not in most cases.)

-Neuroticism ahaha, what is this 1889? There's a reason "female hysteria" has gone the way of the dinosaur as a credible medical diagnosis- trying to confine women to keep them from getting worked up/depressed causes a lack of socialization and stimulation leading to boredom and a further downspiral into depression.

-I'm a little confused why the notion that men being judged based on status is presented as logic that they should therefore have that status. It seems to me more like men need to cut each other a break. Seeking authority to self-destructive lengths is not to me a mark of a good leader; it's the mark of someone who needs serious counseling to work on their self-image.

- I agree that the male gender role is a lot less flexible than the female one, but that shouldn't be presented as reason not to push for more equality in the workplace. If anything it's reason to address the issue I mentioned above that men are under immense societal pressure to succeed at the expense of their own welfare. That's not a good thing.

-Not sure what he's talking about with "Unconscious Bias Training" but I admit that does seem a little extreme if it's what it sounds like. I'm all for educating people who want to learn, but corporate attempts to force ideals down someone's throat can only lead to problems and resentments.

-This is a nitpick so feel free to disregard it, lol, but if you're going to cite sources, do it right plz. Nobody is going to read an entire other article to fact-check that you're not making stuff up, that's why in-text citations list page numbers. Also don't cite wikipedia, at least cite the source wikipedia is citing. Citing wikipedia in a formal paper instantly makes you look 90% less credible.

-That said, because I'm a Master of Library and Information Science, I did look at his sources. He cites an almost ten year old article, which itself lists sources no more recent than 2007 and dating back as far as 1975. May seem irrelevant, but in the sciences it is strongly discouraged to reference articles much older than ten years except in the context of historical comparison, and even ten years is seriously pushing it for credibility. Science is changing and evolving all the time as we learn new things, and if you want resources that are credible you need them to be recent- within the last five years or so is highly preferred. He makes other citations to articles from 2000, 2006, aaand as I mentioned, wikipedia.

* * *

Okay, allllll that said... guy's a blowhard, and I disagree with almost all of his points. However, I don't think he needed to be fired and I respect his right to his opinion. He wasn't necessarily hurting anybody, really, just vomiting up a heckuva lot of outdated ideas and backing up his points with outdated scientific articles- or heavily biased opinion pieces.

He probably should not have circulated this as widely as he did- it's the sort of thing one would ideally submit only to one's higher ups who actually have the authority to act on it- and that goof is probably what cost him his position. But honestly it doesn't offend me or anything, just makes me roll my eyes.

[Ian Wolf-Park]

I just read the article and it just rubs me the wrong way, for various reasons. Yes, the article is calling out Google, but it just reeks of sexism. It's not the biology of a person that decides what profession they will take, it's the person's own decision based on their choices or their life in general. This applies not only to tech companies like Google, but businesses (and governments) in general.

Also, if this person think that by publishing this for the entire public to read, things will go quicker with any implemented policies and/or changes. It won't. It has to be done right, not forced down our throats. There is also the uphill battle to change the status quo as there will always be some resistance to the changes. Of course, this is coming from a country whereour head of state (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) has an inner circle/cabinet that is evenly split between males and females.

[Moni]

I just don't get his point. Like, yes, some of the points he makes are actually correct; it's accepted that there are sociocultural as well as biological differences between men and women (the first segment with the personality differences--it uses the Big Five personality model, which remains the most compelling model in personality psychology--I've seen a 2015 study replicate it. Yes, women do tend to have higher extraversion and neuroticism across cultures than men, though agreeableness is moderated by culture and there seems to be no difference in openness and conscientiousness). Since he isn't a psych person he doesn't really attribute these findings correctly or even really grasp what they mean; he assumes things are innate when that assumption doesn't stand and goes "things are, therefore they should be" sort of logic.

But I just find myself shrugging and not understanding his point. Why is he pointing this stuff out? Is his point that diversity programs are nill because they won't be able to solve why women aren't getting STEM jobs? (Google can't solve the broader cultural issues that results in things like the earnings gap views of women, that's a tall order.) Is his beef with particular company policy? He doesn't go into that much at all besdies vague crotchety platitudes that don't really say anything. I'm just confused.

[Crystal]

I held off on giving my opinion when getting this thread started, but here it is now. I happen to be a female, minority-race computer programmer. After 5 years in the field, I quit for a lower-paying but more personally fulfilling people-focused job, like a walking stereotype.

I've no doubt that others have been biased for or against me because of my gender, but (fortunately?) everything that isn't absolute blatant sexism usually slides off of me like water and ducks. So while I've been the only girl in a class full of guys, the only woman in a team full of men, and the only female manager in my department, I have no memories of being talked down to, mansplained, isolated, or any of that other subtly sexist stuff I keep hearing people talk about. It may or may not have happened, but if it did I must not have given a flying fox.

In my opinion the basis of this memo ridiculous. During the advent of computers, programming was actually considered a 'women's job', like typing or secretarial work. A lot of the early computer programmers were female. It was the mass commercialization of computers for gaming and other such things, specifically marketed toward men, that began the shift from viewing computers as "feminine" to "masculine", so much so that now computer programming is considered "men's work". It's fascinating how much our perceptions are self-fulfilling prophecies Furthermore, even if he's right and women are more "relationship-strong", relationships are an enormous part of working together as a team and in management.

That said, I also somewhat sympathize with the author even though I don't agree with him. The memo reads to me like a grumpy knee-jerk reaction to the "blind" goal of a completely gender-equal work environment because it's the "right" thing, even if it must be artificially inflated through quotas. And I really don't know how I feel about that goal, even though I've totally used it to my advantage before.

Aug 10, 2017 15:08:21 GMT -5 Moni said:

Since he isn't a psych person he doesn't really attribute these findings correctly or even really grasp what they mean; he assumes things are innate when that assumption doesn't stand and goes "things are, therefore they should be" sort of logic.

I'm glad you pointed that out! I thought so too. It's a very programming thing to do. There's a lot of black and white in regards to quality of code/architecture in the field, and software engineers often engage in long debates with that kind of "this is how it is" mental logic. We spend lunches arguing about the innate good or bad qualities of different naming conventions. He approached this entire paper from a system documentation point of view, rather than a social/psych education.

[Crystal]

(Also, for the lulz: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-a-google-manufacturing-robot-and-i-believe-humans-are-biologically-unfit-to-have-jobs-in-tech )

[Celestial]

I would like to draw people's attention to a relevant article written by The Independent (a pretty reputable, albeit left-wing UK newspaper) about a study done by the London School of Economics that shows that Worldplace gender quotas actually serve to weed out incompetent men. So even if the gender-neutrality is artifically inflated through quotas, that is a good thing. Which to me makes sense. If you have, say, a 60/40 male-female split, you are ignoring the 10% of women and replacing them with 10% of lower-performing men.

In light of this, this Google Engineer's response feels, to be perfectly blunt, like a mediocre dude lashing out because he is threated by the influx of competent women. He is using biology to try to back up his point to make it seem more "scientific" (i.e. "I am not sexist but...") but I take anything and everything that claims women are "inferior" or cannot do something with a massive grain of salt because so much that has been held as "scientific biological fact" about women's inferiority has been proven false. The hysteria diagnosis is an excellent example. There was also a belief that women should not ride trains because their uteruses would fall out. The biological argument has been used to exclude and keep out women for a very long time. This is not new.

Whether he should have been fired or not...I don't think Google had any other choice. He would have caused a scandal, and I am sure the women they already have on their payroll would have raised hell had they not cut all ties with him.

Whether this represents an attack on conservative viewpoints, I would say no. This represents the consequence of free speech. He had the right to say this stuff but he should have been prepared to suffer the consequences, which in this case were termination and scandal. The fact that conservative viewpoints are the ones that usually set off these kinds of reactions should really force some poeple to re-examine them. My opinion is that he, just as anybody else, is entitled to his own viewpoint and should be free to express it. But his rights end where other people's begin.

All I see in this is a mediocre man who feels threatened trying to justify why he feels so angry about the new diversity policy without outright saying that he is sexist. That is all. It sucks he lost his job over this but words have consequences, especially words you direct at collegues and potential colleagues.

[Reiqua]

I'm a speech pathologist. When I was doing my masters there were 36 in my class and all 36 of us were female.
I currently work in a health district with two dozen speechies, two of whom are male, the rest female.

Quotas stating that 50% of speech pathologist jobs had to be given to males would annoy me because while it would be effective in weeding out incompetent females, I don't think they'd all be replaced with competent males. Social norms have meant that for some reason males are less interested in the field of speech pathology so those few who did have an interest would be assured of being able to bag what would otherwise be a highly competitive job even if they're not so good at it.

I think of a guy who studied speech pathology at my university but was the year above me - I'll call him Trent. He had a lot of trouble passing his practical assessments but was brilliant academically. In the end he found a job that was more research based than field based and everyone was happy. It's a win for our speech pathology research, and a win for our speech pathology practice to have him writing brilliant papers instead of having him sitting in a clinic room taking twice as long as necessary over fixing lisps. But if there were quotas of male speechies who had to be employed that story would've ended differently.

I think there are some strong parallels you can draw here to what this google guy is talking about, but perhaps you also think there are key differences? Feel free to discuss!

[Shinko]

You can have conservative viewpoints and not be a prat about them- the problem is that different people have different definitions of what is or isn't insulting. Google guy seems to have thought he was presenting his article as a fair and reasonable compromise, but just the language he used announced his bias. He referred to liberals as having compassion for the "weak," as being "unstable," and "idealist" while conservatives "respect authority," are "stable" and "pragmatic." And his arguement downspirals from there.

Maybe it's just my total inabilty to take his arguement seriously, but I really just wasn't all that offended. This essay does not in the least read as threatening to me or my rights because I can't see how anybody in management would've taken it seriously or used it to apply policy. Maybe that's too "idealistic" on my part, but it's how I feel. XD

Maybe the folks who do think he should've gotten fired have a point. He was pretty dismissive of women's capabilities. I feel like if he was going to argue against quotas, there are ways he could've gone about it without stepping on people's toes. Because iiiin general I don't particularly agree with the notion of quotas either. People should be hired, or not, based upon their skill.

The problem (to address Reiqua) is not quotas inherently letting in people who are unqualified for the sake of meeting said quota. The problem is that in some fields, inherent bias means that a qualified minority will be passed over for the sake of hiring an underqualified majority. Maybe this isn't as much of an issue in Australia, I don't know. But it certainly happens a lot in the US.

Ideally quotas would not be neccesary, people would be hired based on their qualifications, and certain genders or races or what have you dominating a certain workforce will be incidental to the sort of people who are interested in that line of work. Which yeah, that's going to happen for some job fields. But as it stands, that isn't how things work right now.

Which begs the question of how one might address the issue otherwise. Set aside for a moment the flaming rage of this dude's absurd sexism and actually look at the point he's trying to make, difficult though that may be since as Moni pointed out his thesis is all over the place.

[Crystal]

Aug 10, 2017 17:03:39 GMT -5 Celestial said:

I would like to draw people's attention to a relevant article written by The Independent (a pretty reputable, albeit left-wing UK newspaper) about a study done by the London School of Economics that shows that Worldplace gender quotas actually serve to weed out incompetent men. So even if the gender-neutrality is artifically inflated through quotas, that is a good thing. Which to me makes sense. If you have, say, a 60/40 male-female split, you are ignoring the 10% of women and replacing them with 10% of lower-performing men.

That's actually super interesting! I would wonder whether the quota system performed better in cases where the split was higher than when the gender split was closer together. For instance, I could see how an influx of women into a 90/10 male-female job split career might press out some of the more mediocre men. But when the number goes higher, such as 60/40, would there be as much of a difference?

I also wonder if quotas do actually result a long-term rise in the number of minority people in the field. If so it would be worth arguing that a short-term dip in fairness might be offset by a long-term rise in competent personnel.

[Celestial]

Reviving an old thread, but I found a very interesting follow-up article about this guy on The Guardian. It does not portray the dude's opinions as right (in fact, there's a very interesting section where several scientists and psychologists debate and debunk his viewpoints) but it does provide some insight into what the thought process behind the memo was, what his influences were and what the fallout was.

Some curious points:
- Dude has a girlfriend who is a data engineer and a feminist?! It's telling there are some subjects that they do not discuss.

- He is apparently on the autism spectrum, though he does not use his condition as an excuse for what he said, just trying to explain where he was coming from. He simply could not fathom the consequences of what he said. Being on the spectrum myself, I do sympathise with it to some extent. I also have trouble interpreting whether I said something that crossed a line and imagining the consequences of an action. In light of this, I do feel for him that this blew up in his face as it did. It does not excuse his views, because they are stil ill-informed and sexist, but I do agree with him that some benefit of the doubt should be given to autistic people when it comes to interpreting something as "offensive". I've had personal experience of stuff I said or did being interpretted harshly when I did not know what the problem was.

- He was influenced a lot by "alt-right" thinking. This is hardly surprising, given the views he espoused. He seems to have come to his conclusion based on a very limited amount of biased sources. This highlights a problem which is, sadly, bigger than he is: the radicalisation of white men by the "alt-right" by these people. In some way, this does make him a victim too: he has had his fears and insecurities and inherent biases exploited and turned to this ideology.

- He was also taken advantage of by this "alt-right" after the memo leaked and he was fired. In the article, he describes a photoshoot and interviews which he did not know how to navigate, in part due to his autism, which all served to make him as a symbol for people who buy into the same ideology as he does. He did not agree with all that was espoused by these people but could not find the words to express them, which was interepretted as agreement. In this way, it does demonstrate that silence might as well be a yes when it comes to oppression, but it also shows the ideology for what it is: predatory, taking in men like him who might be vulnerable in some respects, whether it be due to mental conditions, social status or something else, and them using them to fuel their own agenda.

Overall, while I still think he is wrong and his memo was highly flawed at best, bad science at worst, it is interesting to see the thought process behind this and how movements like the "alt-right" can indoctorinate and exploit their followers to suit their own needs.

EDIT: Oops, I forgot to link. There is now a link at the top.

[Ryanruff13]

After a while of having heard about this, it was only now that I decided to read the actual document. Better late than never to tackle this beast.

This will probably be a very controversial opinion, and while I do understand the controversy surrounding the memo given that societal gender-based issues can be a touchy and heated subject to discuss, my opinion: I personally do not have any qualms with the underlying message of the memo itself.

Before I elaborate on my viewpoint, I will say that I do get how certain areas in the document can lead to the impression that Damore is being arrogant; he does devote some time critiquing certain biases from people, and I do understand that his tone does seem rather mocking towards Google. Additionally, I can understand certain statements appearing shocking out of context (e.g. it seems shocking that it lists "neuroticism" as being a trait of women...until one sees that it was simply an objective statement as to an innate capacity to handle stress rather than being a derogatory statement)

With that said, the takeaway that I received from Damore's argument was essentially that there are biological differences that will generally lead to different tendencies from each gender, and that sexism, while a factor in society, is not the only factor that produces unequal representations of men and women in particular fields. I believe that his message to Google was not that diversity was wrong, but rather that he was criticizing one-dimensional, forced diversity through the usage of discriminatory hiring practices, and that efforts being made to encourage greater representation and fairer treatment of women would benefit from being more focused towards acknowledgement and awareness of said tendencies in order to better accommodate for individual needs, instead of merely reversing sexist biases to be set against the other sex.

I believe that the memo is more accurately interpreted if one views (1. its statements regarding differences within people as not being wholly-encompassing stereotypes but rather as merely being general tendencies, and that Damore was not arguing that these tendencies are universal across all cases - rather, only that they will not produce a perfect 50/50 split in regards to representation, (2. that Damore was making the argument that Google was doing more harm than good to women by ignoring individual needs, and that Damore's intent was to protect women's rights rather than to demean them, and (3. that Damore was never denying that there are still plenty of women who are passionate about and are deeply talented in technological fields.

Similarly to what Crystal stated in the first post, I do believe that the delivery of the message of his memo would have benefitted from a more optimal execution so that it would not read as being cocky towards the CEOs of Google. But I do not believe that it was Damore's intent.

One could argue that I may be biased myself being male, and I acknowledge that that could quite possibly be the case. I will devote more time to rereading/analyzing the document later to see if there are any more points that I could take away from it.

(I also find worth sharing that Damore recently appeared in a video discussing his memo and its reaction, and while it is from a right-wing YouTube channel [similarly to the actual memo, there are certain statements in the video regarding his conservative viewpoint], I believe that the majority of the video does otherwise approach the subject from a nonpartisan perspective. I am also aware that Damore appeared on the liberal talk show The Rubin Report discussing the issue further, although I have yet to watch it.)

[Moni]

So, the thing with people who don't know anything about psychology (ie. people who aren't in the field), is that they tend to look at something and then proceed to completely misunderstand it. It's actually one of the reasons I don't actually bother discussing psychology, especially pathological psychology, with a lot of lay people, because they just do not. have. the knowledge.

For example, a lot of people misunderstand what neuroticism means. It is a facet of personality according to one specific personality model (that happens to be the main one). According to that same model, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreableness, all have definitions in psychological jargon that journalists quite frankly get wrong most of the time and makes me want to choke somebody.

This person did not have that understanding that has a good standard. He says a lot of things and gets them right, and I don't even wholly disagree with his conclusion (even though the reason I agree with his conclusion doesn't follow from any of his logic), but the way he throws the facts out there betrays his lack of understanding of these terms. To me, his memo simply read as incoherent as to the facts it points out and its conclusion, not particularly sexist.

About Google's programs: Google ( and every other tech company) can only go so far to bridge the male-female gap. The ideal ratio with no discrimination at all will be the ratio of male:female computer scientists who are currently in the field. That means if the total ratio of software engineers available in the workforce is 70:30 m:f, then google's output should be 70:30 m:f barring discriminatory hiring. (a 50:50 m:f split will mean that you are hiring people who are Not Good at their jobs, and if you do that without the workforce being there your program is dumb.) I'd argue that Google's social responsibility pretty much ends there.

The sexism in society mainly manifests before the actual employment stage: ie how we as a society discourage girls from going into STEM--this is a society-wide problem and it's silly that we expect one sector (tech) to fix it rather than society as a whole. Even in an ideal society without discrimination, it's probably unlikely you'll see a 50:50 m:f parity in all fields; it'll round out to a close and unequal ratio, but that's not really a problem (and we're not at the point where we've achieved this)--but see, he gets none of these things right.

The guy shouldn't have been fired, but he should have been taught and educated about how sexism actually works--and how to form an argument, for that matter. Because while he does have some nuances down, it really did seem like the point was a reactionary "sexism n'existe pas!!!" rather than a cogent critique of Google's diversity policy. He should have actually gone into the diversity policy rather than isolated facts that lead people to the wrong conclusion.

Because if I say, without any further context, and I haven't studied this at all, that black people score less on the ACT than white people (which is true), it looks pretty racist. It's because people who throw out this argument will end it there with the implication of "see? This is because black people are less intelligent than white people!" Similarly, this paper threw out a bunch of differences between men and women without properly contextualizing them for a lay audience (which, to his credit, he did try to put some contextualizing in there with his "these are only averages" part), and yeah, it looked pretty sexist. I don't think Damore is a misogynist (although the alt-reich definitely is), but I do think that my initial impression, that the memo was pretty pointless, still stands regardless of this "new" context.

[Zoey]

Gender/race diversity programs, imo, are a necessity to -help- bring more equality into our society. It is not the panacea to race/gender discrimination, but there are so many societal factors that cause this race/gender discrimination that it is near impossible to solve it with just one workplace policy. As many of you mentioned, women want more work/life balance because society still expects them to be the "head of the family", ie. childcare, making sure everyone's healthy, etc., and there's no way you can do that when you're director of your department and working 10+ hours a day at a location that may be a good, long commute from home. However, if you had a spouse that was more flexible and perfectly willing to take care of the kids (which should be the common attitude, as I don't see any evidence that males are not as good as females at childrearing, given that they have the same knowledge and opportunity to do so), then I don't see why an ambitious woman couldn't take on that leadership role.

Same with racial discrimination. As Moni said, it's highly erroneous to take, say, ACT scores and conclude that because black people on average score lower than white people, black people are dumber. No, science has emphasized many times that association does NOT equal causation. You can speculate, but in this case, it's because black people are traditionally at a disadvantage because of society's attitude and treatment of this race. It's not like they were allowed to school when they were enslaved up until the turn of the 20th century; it's not like they were even allowed to go to the same schools as everyone else up until the Civil Rights movement; and it's still not like they have the same opportunities as white people because they're seen as poorer and more violent. There are so many societal factors going against them and it just makes me mad when I hear people deny that they have more "privilege" because they were born in a better position. If you're given two kids who have an equal interest in computers and equal amount of time to tinker with them, how do you expect the kid who has less access to computers to be more proficient with them than the kid who is able to afford one of his own?

At my workplace now, even though I'd say it's eons better than the workplace attitude at a lot of places, I've heard at least one of my male coworkers talk about women getting pregnant in disdain, like, "yeah, she just got pregnant and we never saw her again" and in general talk about pregnancy like it harms company productivity because of maternal leave and whatnot. Well, freaking duh, the woman literally just popped out a human child from her body, it's not like you can just bounce right back from that. Plus, there's the added caveat of THERE'S A HUMAN CHILD TO TAKE CARE OF NOW. In most cases, I see these pregnant women coming in to work right up until they're due, and holy crud can you imagine hauling around a violent watermelon in your belly causing all sorts of hormonal and biological issues and still having to go to work at the same time? I can't even get through my own biological cycle without popping a pain-numbing pill or two every month. As the ongoing saying goes, "if men could also get pregnant, we wouldn't be having these issues".

So yes, there needs to still be workplace policy regarding gender discrimination, if only because we are biologically different and therefore require different needs. Yes, women generally hold less leadership roles, but it's a combination of many factors, and gender equality in the workplace needs to be enforced so that we can move towards a society that has a less clean-cut "male/female gender role" division. There's a loooot of other things that need work as well, such as the massive gender/racial imbalance in Congress, which I think is the most important to address, because without that equality we will never be able to make policies that actually help achieve equality. So no, dude, we should not make equality a non-issue. But thanks for releasing the note so that this problem is brought to attention to more people.

[Shinko]

Yeah, that was pretty much my assertion when this debate was going on originally, though it didn't really get much attention, ahaha. I was never all that offended by Damore's memo, and while I don't agree with his thesis on the nature of females and/or liberals (both of whom he paints with a rather broadly pitying, dismissive brush) I can see the point he's trying to make through all of that. Quotas are inherently unfair and people should not be obligated to make certain hires over others to meet a particular corporate mandate. However in a lot of cases that corporate mandate is the only thing keeping the hiring departments from rejecting those minorities outright, irregardless of skill.

The issue with the idea of "reverse -ism" as a construct is that it assumes our society has progressed to the point where the original discriminatory practices are not longer relevant and the "reverse -ism" is in place only as a means of revenge. That it, inherently by existing, is a form of oppression in it's own right. I don't agree with that standpoint, because no, our society just isn't there in terms of equality yet. It's just not.

Sometimes, in some situations, there are no easy answers. You have to do things that are a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow in the short term in order to get a positive outcome in the long run.

I can confirm Zoey's assertions about workplace discrimination against women getting pregnant, for example. I worked at a McDonalds when I was nineteen where the store manager literally screamed at a girl until she was almost in tears, telling her to stop bothering him, because she was asking him about the company policies regarding maternity. Her mother had to come in with a lawyer before he would stop being a jerk about it. No, this is not hyperbole, I was in the store at the drive thru while this was happening and witnessed every minute of it with my own eyes. Is that extreme common? Certainly not, and I'm never going to pretend it is. But it does help illustrate my point.

What I think is more interesting than lambasting quotas- which again, I will readily conceded are inherently flawed- is how we might better address the issue that the quota exists to combat. Yes, there are fields where men will inherently outnumber women for no discriminatory reason. But just because there are counter-examples, that does not undermine the fact that there is absolutely a problem of discriminatory hiring practices that exclude women. Be it because of neuroticism, fear of pregnancy, or whatever other justifications. So, if we don't like quotas, what's a better way to address it? Right now that's our temporization. A measure to try and even things out, imperfect yes but the best we can come up with. How might one deal with this in a different way?