Interview responses are monitored for tone and vocabulary everywhere. Insufficient enthusiasm is often a valid reason not to hire someone. It is appropriate to ask questions about diversity and feminism during an interview—those are core values of the company, the first bullet point on their Careers page, even. https://github.com/about/careers
Are you saying github is asking questions about diversity and feminism in their hiring process or that an eq test has these questions ?
Because political opinions have nothing to do with eq testing (see http://myframeworks.org/testmyeq/).
IANAL, and my info may be out of date.
My understanding is that political ideology isn't a protected group at the national level here in America. Although states/cities can write their own laws that effectively add to the list. It's not a protected group in Washington state either, I believe, but it is a protected class in Seattle: https://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/civil-rights#whatisaprot... .
Microsoft does have some presence in Seattle (Microsoft Store, Microsoft Reactor?) so I could see some of their lawyers being made quite nervous by even the hint of discrimination by politics, even where ostensibly legal.
Wait, what? How is that even legal? Not sure what's the exact meaning of "eq screenings" but anything related to political affiliation should be out of any interview process. At least in Europe discrimination on political views or other belief is completely illegal (with some exception for the church in some countries, e.g: Germany).