No, he's using a biological justification to openly discuss different ways to foster diversity. This is one of his points: the most common argument against him is just that you think he's a sexist, not because you don't think his ideas will actually foster any kind of diversity. And I don't understand that. The reaction here is the opposite of tolerance and diversity.

edit: I'm going to give a personal example: I strongly supported legalizing gay marriage, but I also support the right of anyone to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake or to run a church and not perform gay marriages. And I've had numerous former friends chew me out and shun me for being "intolerant". It's that attitude that makes reasonable political discussions harder and harder (at least in the US right now) because it makes everyone fear to give up anything to reach a compromise or to even understand each other.

But we're back to discussing the reaction again. Which is a neat way of avoiding the content of the article itself.

I have no particular need to apply the label of "sexist" to this guy. I have no opinion, nor enough information, to say whether he should be fired or not.

I do think he's profoundly wrong though, and think his arguments about biological differences bear at least a passing resemblance to some wholly discredited arguments.

>> he's trying to find a biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career.

>> avoiding the content of the article itself.

That's what I'm talking about. I also think his ideas wouldn't be terribly effective, but I think villifying and dismissing him just for saying it does more harm than him saying it. That's why there are people focusing on the reaction. It doesn't really matter who the onus is on to justify his claims if you're not going to actually listen to anyone who disagrees with you anyway. And you can't claim you actually listened, because you explicitly said he was arguing in favor of excluding people based on class. That's what you heard from all of his suggestions to approach inclusion a different way.

Much like how I find the other replies to your last comment far more bothersome than anything you said...

What does "bear at least a passing resemblance to some wholly discredited arguments" mean? Is this the same sort of thinking that has people rabidly ferreting out "dogwhistles" in normal speech?

It's not about exclusion, it's about preference. We seem to be trying to force a result, in the name of equality, when there may not in fact be any inequality. I'm not saying there isn't sexism in Silicon Valley. I'm saying that trying to steer women into certain fields of study they may not, on average, be as interested in it as men seems really dumb.

If companies were really, truly interested in fairness and equality, then their HR policies for hiring would say one and only one thing - that the best candidate is the one that gets the job. Only exception would be issues with background checks or perhaps questionable/falsified work history or resume. Other than that, the rule stands. There would be no need to ensure "diversity" as a corporate policy because any and all minorities that apply and are the best will get hired. In those cases, HR would be there to document in detail who was the best and why to protect the company from frivolous diversity related lawsuits. HR would also act as a check and balance on imperfect and possibly biased individuals.

> If companies were really, truly interested in fairness and equality, then their HR policies for hiring would say one and only one thing - that the best candidate is the one that gets the job.

It's strange though that you will find many engineers who say that HR policies for hiring do a poor job of finding the right engineers for the job (whiteboarding tests, easily gamed, "culture fit" etc), but who don't seem as eager to admit that these factors, rather than "biological differences" could be what are excluding women.

Whiteboarding tests are not HR policies anywhere. HR has next to nothing to do with who gets hired other than when they intervene. They're typically the last step of the process.

> biological justification to exclude a class of people from a high-status career

No. He's proposing a biological explanation for why the career is not split 50/50 between men and women. An explanation which frankly sounds plausible.