Today's Editors' Choice

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Opinion in Brief

Rich Lowry: "The first thing to know about the instantly infamous 'anti-diversity screed' written by an anonymous Google software engineer is that it isn't anti-diversity or a screed. ... The document was meant — before getting splashed on the Internet — as an internal conversation-starter. The author posits that innate differences between the sexes may account for the disparity between men and women in the male-dominated world of high-tech. ... Women tend to be better with people, men with things. Is either of those superior? Women tend to put more emphasis on family, men on their status. Does that speak better of women or men? As the Google author cautions, 'Many of these differences are small and there's significant overlap between men and women, so you can't say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.' In light of these differences, though, it is foolhardy to expect 50/50 gender parity in professional life, and otherworldly to believe such differences don't have a role in the predominance of men in, say, software engineering. Obviously, the field should be open to women, and Neanderthal behavior in the workplace should be stamped out. But a company that believes implicit bias accounts for gender imbalances must be allergic to certain inconvenient facts. The Google author raised them, and will probably pay the price."