>Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps some

>Can you explain why hiring women who are just as good as, if not better than, men at the job, but who would prefer (on average) to work elsewhere, perhaps somewhere with more women employees, would make the business do worse? The issue is in the act of finding them. This is where statistics and discrimination comes into play. Lets say that ratio of women vs men that are interested in working at google (and capable of being hired) is 20% to 80%. Then if your goal is to reach gender parity, you must do one of three things: (1) test significantly more women vs men to find those 20% at a higher rate (which involves active discrimination against men), (2) lower the standards specifically for women so that the pass rate for women is higher, or (3) active intervention along gender lines to increase the percentage of women that are interested and capable of passing a google screening. It should be obvious that 1&2 leads to worse outcomes for Google. (3) doesn't directly lead to worse outcomes, but it could be seen as divisive to discriminate against men in these outreach programs, which could indirectly lead to worse outcomes for Google. Now, one could argue that these gender-based outreach programs are just to counter cultural sexism that have kept women from being more interested in engineering jobs at Google. But if the stats in the memo are accurate, at least some portion of the disparity is not due to external factors but individual choices based on inherent (dis)interest. If this is true then such outreach will largely be unsuccessful for the cost in money and resentment.