I read this as suggesting that the engineering field is currently structured in a way that skews towards the preferences and natural strengths of men rather tha

I read this as suggesting that the engineering field is currently structured in a way that skews towards the preferences and natural strengths of men rather than women. He's not saying that women are less capable engineers in principle. That would be an absurd argument given that women dominated the field only a few decades ago. Rather, he's arguing that we've reshaped the field and the culture such that it's inherently hostile to women, which is exactly the same argument I hear all the time. He just didn't express it very well. As I recall, his entire point is that we should be reshaping the field to make it more appealing to women so that they are drawn to it naturally, as opposed to the current strategy of giving women preferential treatment in the hiring process, only to have them leave because we haven't addressed the underlying problems that are driving them away. That's hardly a radical idea. There are benefits to his approach: I, for one, think the field would benefit greatly if we focused more on, for example, the importance of empathy. Thinking about others ought to be a fundamental pillar of software engineering, as it naturally leads to better UX, APIs, and services. And when we think about the people who will be maintaining our code, we're inclined to write better code that is easier to grok.