Having read a lot of the "are you sure she didn't misinterpret that" or "it's not like women can't apply to these jobs" comments, I'd like to help people overcome their knee-jerk reflex and really think about this instead of throwing their hands up.<p>For those who are questioning her experience, let's consider a piece of satire about bias at Hogwarts (and mentally substituting gender or other demographic of choice for religion here):<p>"These facts will likely surprise Hogwarts students today, especially those acquainted with the broader history of Judaism at their school... and though Spinoza’s invitation to deliver a series of lectures, in 1652, was met with protests, organizers were careful to note that it was the philosopher’s virulent anti-wizarding stance that they objected to, not his Jewish extraction.<p>A turning point in the story of anti-Semitism at Hogwarts came in 1920, when Jewish enrollment, buoyed by excellent Wizarding Admissions Test scores, peaked at thirty per cent. Complaints began to circulate that the “character of the place” was changing. These were vague comments, but no one mistook their meaning. The conservative Board of Governors (which, for the record, did not admit a Jew until Robert Rubin joined, in 1995) exerted enormous pressure on Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black to “do something about it,” and the Class of 1926 was the first to be subject to the notorious Jewish quotas that would stand for almost fifty years. There were no hard numbers, of course—only a directive to the admissions committee to begin placing less weight on test scores and more on certain vaguely defined categories such as “character,” “fitness,” and “spell diction.” But it was enough.<p>Of course, the situation at Hogwarts had never been anywhere near as bad as at the universities in Eastern and Central Europe, where Jewish wizards as eminent as Freud and Einstein, unable to secure teaching appointments, were forced to use their magic in the service of formulating bizarre Muggle theories. Nor was Hogwarts ever the site of anti-Semitic violence, seen at too many of the Hungarian and Austrian wizarding schools during the tumultuous years after the First World War. There, student “demonstrations” often included the use of the so-called Jewish spells, cruel incantations that caused the peyes (side curls) to become scalding hot, the phylacteries to tighten around the wearer’s head—and, of course, the notorious “kipa spinner.”<p>No, Hogwarts was never the setting for any bigotry as brutal as that, and if I persist in recalling the minor injustices it is for the sake of guarding against future anti-Semitism in its most subtle forms." [1]<p>1. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/true-history-jewish-wizards-hogwarts-harry-potter" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/true-history-jew...</a>