These traits are measured with self-report surveys. I.e.
personality quizzes. Not to malign the field of psychology,
but this isn't the gold standard of science, IMHO.

These kinds of flaws permeate every study about discrimination. It's a field of study intrinsically fraught with issues, especially when you move beyond situations of direct discrimination.

In any event, let's not forget that sexism isn't merely something that men foist upon women; it's a culture that can be internalized and perpetuated by women, too. Which means that it's easily possible (and almost certainly likely to some extent) that wealthier, more egalitarian societies exhibit more exaggerated gender roles precisely _because_ women, in being able to self-segregate more broadly, are thus empowered to perpetuate culturally defined gender preferences into far reaching corners of society.

There was a great article recently about a woman who intentionally wore flowery dresses to the office as an expression of her femininity, in purposeful contravention of what she saw as a culture which forced women to unnecessarily and unfairly adopt more masculine expressions. I think it's fair to say that we'll always have a notion of femininity, and that most women would want it that way. Men may have forced dresses upon women at some point, but in our modern culture, at least for the time being, a dress is one marker of a certain kind of femininity that many women feel is empowering. For the past couple of decades, many feminists in particular have been at the forefront of re-introducing these sorts of social signals. This has been partly driven by the way that many men have responded to diversification--by spitefully demanding that all gender markers be erased (usually in favor of the default masculine model), after years of enforcing those gender distinctions to secure their dominance.

You can see how this interplay can become extremely complex. What happens when certain jobs are considered by many women to be too masculine, while at the same time a preference for overt femininity is on the rise (in a mostly positive way) among women? We can still easily trace the phenomenon to its origins in cut-and-dry sex discrimination within an oppressive, male-dominated society. Yet at the same time it's been co-opted--intentionally and unintentionally--by many women and become intrinsic to their sense of autonomy and self-expression. On the one hand that arguably makes those women complicit in sex discrimination; on the other hand trying to directly change those preferences can be (nay, is intrinsically) just as discriminatory.

Now try to untangle that from whatever innate predispositions we have. It's intractable.

The unspeakable truth here is that we have no good way of knowing the precise _extent_ to which hiring practices or work environments are quantitively and qualitatively sexist in the sense of being hostile to women. Some aspects of discrimination are effectively unmeasurable and perhaps even unknowable because there's no simple delineation between classes of perpetrators and victims. I don't think many people doubt that sexism exists, notwithstanding some rabid anti-feminist groups. The issue is 1) defining the problem and 2) finding solutions. But we'll never be able to satisfactorily define #1, and therefore #2 will always rest on some amount of speculation.

What the author of the Google memo fails to realize--and what many smart leaders understand is unspeakable--is that affirmative action programs are, on some level, _intentionally_ designed to cope with complicity of the discriminated group. When push comes to shove, I think most thoughtful people agree that there's a strong element of self-selection driven by incredibly complex social dynamics. At some level there's a calculated judgment that says the way to address self-segregation is to _engineer_ a situation where there are more women in a role than there might otherwise be given some perfectly meritocratic environment.

That judgment is almost certainly wrong. But there is no right answer. Discrimination, in all is forms, is a legacy that will never be extinguished; at least not anytime soon. It will reverberate for countless generations, tainting all our choices. And in as much as there's an innate tendency to discriminate, there'll never be a right answer.

IMO, whether you agree or disagree with affirmative action, there has to be a tolerance for solutions which might overshoot the mark relative to some platonic ideal, especially if you're a member of a privileged group. It's not feasible to address sexism without accepting that some men are going to be discriminated against. Likewise for racism. It forces a contradiction that America has been wrestling with since its founding. There's no having our cake and eating it, too. It's difficult to discuss these things in a completely open and honest manner because there's literally no way to resolve the conflict between American notions of egalitarianism and meritocracy. To do so forces you to recognize that both concepts are deeply flawed, and not many people are prepared to do that.