“I don’t know how you can have the same kind of people… and think you’re being fair in your selection process. Ever. That you had no problem. It’s just that you had ‘higher standards’.” Kara Swisher with Emily Chang

“I said: ‘what is your responsibility to hiring women?’ He said ‘We’re serious about this, we’re blind to gender, race, ethnicity we’re looking very hard.’ I said ‘Are you looking hard enough?’ He said we’re looking very hard. What we’re not to prepared to do is to ‘lower our standards’.”

“Which is only used with women and people of color. Just fyi.”

“I couldn’t believe what I just heard. I wasn’t trying to trap him”

“That’s not trapping. That’s what he thinks. I thought he would have thought about it and would have a thoughtful answer.”

“People were horrified. And to be fair, some people didn’t think anything was wrong with it.”

“I don’t know how you can have the same kind of people… and think you’re being fair in your selection process. Ever. That you had no problem. It’s just that you had ‘higher standards’.”

“If you judge Sequoia simply on actions: they didn’t hire a woman in 44 years. This is the best venture capital firm. You’re telling me you can’t find one woman?”

“What they’re saying is women are not qualified to do technology. Or that you’re not qualified to find them. It’s the thing, they’ve had all this success? What have they missed? How do they know they haven’t missed out on the woman who would have found the cure to cancer or whatever”

Source: Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher – How to fix Silicon Valley’s ‘Brotopia’