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> This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability That's simply not true. The memo (as the other comment chain litigates) absolutely makes reference

> This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability That's simply not true. The memo (as the other comment chain litigates) absolutely makes reference to both preference and ability.

manfredo 9y ago
Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men. As a hint: > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. This statement references distributions, not averages. E.g men may be more prevalent at the top of the scale but also at the bottom. This is entirely in line with what I wrote about the memo referring to variance.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men The claims about their average tolerance for high-status jobs is a direct statement about average ability for certain job roles. You can perhaps argue that it accurately reflects the psychological research (which is a different discussion), but it absolutely is directly a statement about ability. He also specifically says women generally have “a harder time...leading”, which is a direct statement of reduced average ability in all roles involving leadership.
  - manfredo 9y ago
    He claims that women on average choose to work less stressful jobs. The exact terms he used are, "higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance". Perhaps others think "tolerance" is closer to "ability" than "preference", but that's not how I view it. For example, I have a pretty low tolerance for cold climates. I can tolerate them when I need to like when hiking on Alaskan glaciers, visiting relatives in cold places. On average I'm a pretty outdoorsy person so I think have have a good ability to hike in the cold, as I'm confident in my ability to layer clothing and whatnot. But usually I choose not to because that is my preference. Regardless, Damore even says that there are ways to mitigate this. He suggests that Google should, > Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits. For your second paragraph, here is the full quote. > This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support. This is in the context of how women prefer to channel extraversion. Again, preferences make it harder for them to end up in leadership roles. And yet again, Damore offers a way to mitigate this and achieve greater numbers of women in leadership roles: > Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. For both of your points, these aren't claims about ability but preferences from my reading. Even if you disagree with this interpretation, Damore still claims that these differences shouldn't exclude women from tech and advancing in tech careers and lists out ways to limit the impact these factors currently have.
- ncallaway 9y ago
  Referencing a distribution of abilities is making a reference to abilities. Your statement was categorical. "This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability". Yet it was a statement about distributions of ability. That's a statement that references ability. You didn't say "the memo refers to variance of abilities". You stated that it did not reference ability. That statement is simply not true.

> This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability That's simply not true. The memo (as the other comment chain litigates) absolutely makes reference to both preference and ability.

manfredo 9y ago

Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men. As a hint: > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. This statement references distributions, not averages. E.g men may be more prevalent at the top of the scale but also at the bottom. This is entirely in line with what I wrote about the memo referring to variance.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men The claims about their average tolerance for high-status jobs is a direct statement about average ability for certain job roles. You can perhaps argue that it accurately reflects the psychological research (which is a different discussion), but it absolutely is directly a statement about ability. He also specifically says women generally have “a harder time...leading”, which is a direct statement of reduced average ability in all roles involving leadership.
- manfredo 9y ago
  He claims that women on average choose to work less stressful jobs. The exact terms he used are, "higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance". Perhaps others think "tolerance" is closer to "ability" than "preference", but that's not how I view it. For example, I have a pretty low tolerance for cold climates. I can tolerate them when I need to like when hiking on Alaskan glaciers, visiting relatives in cold places. On average I'm a pretty outdoorsy person so I think have have a good ability to hike in the cold, as I'm confident in my ability to layer clothing and whatnot. But usually I choose not to because that is my preference. Regardless, Damore even says that there are ways to mitigate this. He suggests that Google should, > Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits. For your second paragraph, here is the full quote. > This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support. This is in the context of how women prefer to channel extraversion. Again, preferences make it harder for them to end up in leadership roles. And yet again, Damore offers a way to mitigate this and achieve greater numbers of women in leadership roles: > Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. For both of your points, these aren't claims about ability but preferences from my reading. Even if you disagree with this interpretation, Damore still claims that these differences shouldn't exclude women from tech and advancing in tech careers and lists out ways to limit the impact these factors currently have.
ncallaway 9y ago
Referencing a distribution of abilities is making a reference to abilities. Your statement was categorical. "This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability". Yet it was a statement about distributions of ability. That's a statement that references ability. You didn't say "the memo refers to variance of abilities". You stated that it did not reference ability. That statement is simply not true.