Illegal: Well, it's the law of the land in some countries to only hire men. World bank says 108 countries have some sort of law against hiring women in certain

Illegal: Well, it's the law of the land in some countries to only hire men. World bank says 108 countries have some sort of law against hiring women in certain circumstances. First order, I agree with you. But you're missing second and third order dynamics, which is exactly what I think Amazon was picking up on. Workers participate in a system, and that system might or might not privilege certain groups. It looks like from the data that white men were more successful at getting high ratings and getting promoted at Amazon in that era. We could speculate about why that is, from institutional sexism / racism inside the org, to any other categorical statement someone might want to make, to an assertion that white men were just 'better' as contributors, per your example. We just don't know, but I think it would be interesting to find out. Think of it as applied HR research; we need a lot more of it in my opinion.