Well, if there is some systemic biases preventing women from successful careers in IT/tech/whatever that's a problem—the talent supply is artificially restricted and we get inferior products because of that.

That's an open question, of course.

I mean, that's a possibility, but could it also be possible that women, for whatever reason, just aren't interested in IT/tech/whatever in general in the first place? By this I mean to say, it could be simply that there are fewer women who want to go into tech. So to try and encourage more to come in, who perhaps don't want to, could be counter-productive. And if your goal is not to stop until there are more women in tech, what are you going to do then?

Speculation only gets you so far.

Agreed, and that's my point - it seems to be equally speculation that women are staying away from tech because it's 'toxic', and further it doesn't seem to be on sound basis that having more women in tech would lead to some necessarily good outcome. People say they want diversity. I would rather have diversity of opinion and style of thinking and strengths than diversity in things which are to me so inconsequential as race and gender.

Perhaps old friend Hegel is relevant here:

>When ... a man is told, “You (your inner being) are so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted”, this means nothing else than that we regard a bone as the man’s reality. To retort upon such a statement with a box on the ear … removes primarily the “soft” parts of his head from their apparent dignity and position, and proves merely that these are not the true inherent nature, are not the reality of mind; the retort here would, properly speaking, have to go the length of breaking the skull of the person who makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to him in a manner as palpable as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reality.

A friend of mine makes a great point about this:

Regardless of the reasons for the differential, tech has so much impact on society - think about the cultural impact of video games just as one vector - it is meaningfully problematic if a non representative slice of society creates almost all of it.

> it is meaningfully problematic if a non representative slice of society creates almost all of it

this can take you down some socially controversial paths. if you apply the same judgements to other identity groups who dominate other extremely influential sectors, you are going to run into serious trouble.

You mean like mentioning that Facebook and Google are owned/led by minorities? Or?

Antisemites complaining about how Jews control Hollywood, the banking system, have 22% of nobel prizes while only being 0.2% of world population etc.

I really don't understand why that would be. In fact, given that most people are not software developers, we can be sure that the people making those high impact things are very non-representative of the population. Moreover, people can provide good services and understand others' problems without having to experience them themselves. Otherwise we wouldn't have male gynecologists for example. Sometimes, the distance is useful or even preferred.

the 50:50 ratio is taken to mean there are no inhibitions or advantages for one or the other as this is the rough ratio of male to female in the general population. The skew of the ratio can be read as there are some factors we aren't seeing. So the question isn't "why do we need this ratio" but "why isn't this ratio present?"

No one cares who writes their code either, but certainly we can agree that if there are systematic reasons preventing women from participating as much we can try to remove them?

But why is it even a goal? I don't think the world is any better or worse off for having any particular ratio of genders in tech. Just let the cards fall as they will.

Similarly, if this is such an urgent goal, why are we not seeing an even more strident push to even the genders in roles where direct human interaction occurs, like teaching and nursing?

If different genders offer such a unique perspective in tech, surely that perspective is even more important in teaching our youth or caring for the sick.

The fall in numbers of male teachers is causing concern, at least in the UK:

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37552056

- https://www.teachingtimes.com/news/primary-schools-male-teac...

- https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/mar/23/male-teach...

The thought is that the cards aren't currently just falling as they will, and instead they're falling in a biased way due to prior decisions (and current ones!) that disadvantages certain people. The over-eagerness towards diversity programs and such therefore is in effort to push things to a neutral state so that the cards can indeed just fall as they will.

Who's to say what a neutral state is? And what mysterious conspiracy is holding back the admission office of universities and HR departments across the globe? I just think you're fighting ghosts.

Additionally, I don't buy that employing 100% of women is actually helpful. Children need a parent at home, and a mother makes more sense for younger children. We should be working towards decentralization of work, and allowing dads and moms to both have more time in the home, rather than racing to lock the entire human race in a cubicle.

Because tech is lucrative right now.

Tell that to the crusade of people who are fighting for "better representation" in tech, and are happy to enforce non-official quotas.