Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who fired an employee in August for allegedly "perpetuating gender stereotypes", said he doesn't regret his decision.
However, Pichai, in a live conversation with journalists, said that he was taken aback that it was misconstrued to be a politically motivated event, The Verge reported.
"The decision to fire James Damore was about ensuring that women at Google felt like the company was committed to creating a welcoming environment. I regret that people misunderstand that we may have made this for a political belief one way or another", he said.
In August last year, Damore was fired for allegedly creating gender stereotypes through a memo that claimed women may be biologically less suited to engineering and programming jobs in the tech industry.
"To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK", Pichai had said in a statement.
However, Damore, in his defence, filed a lawsuit against the company accusing it of "discriminating against white male conservatives".