Ask a woman in tech, or a black man in tech what their experience is. Often there's an unstated assumption that they don't belong, or that they're at a lower level. I'm south asian, and when I visit my work's offices on the east coast, I get pegged as an electrical technician rather than an engineer. /And I'm in the in-group generally/.
I'd also argue that 50% is a much better goal for gender diversity in engineering than the ~10% representation women have currently, especially considering that the gender equilibrium point for engineering is currently unknowable due to the massive systemic discrimination/opportunity problems.
I have no problem with front-loaded incentives. Google started recruiting directly on the campus of Howard University, and they have the numbers to show that it actually revealed qualified applicants that would otherwise have been missed. But mandated quotas which are equality of outcome are problematic to meritocracy itself.
Equality of Outcome logically contradicts Equality of Opportunity, and must be rejected.
I am disheartened to see your post greying out.
I concede though, that some methods of affirmative action would appear to be local attempts to enforce "equality of outcome," but I don't think this is the goal of affirmative action campaigns. If anything, it's a measure taken (locally) to create an environment that can support equal opportunity (locally). As society approaches having equality of opportunity, I imagine that this strategy would lose its utility and be discarded.
In this case, in the span of two comments, the poster went from:
>Do people actually argue in favor of equality of outcomes? Can't say I've ever seen this done, but then again I haven't seen everything.
to arguing in favor of equality of outcomes.
Individually, both of these posts are fine; but together are problematic.
So either this is a troll, or it's an example of someone so "ideologically possessed" they think they're justified to lie in pursuit of their goals.
Remember: meta-criticism.
Maybe I'm wrong in my understanding of "Equality of Outcomes," but I don't see that concept as being inextricably linked with targeting a particular gender split. If you only target female candidates for a year, is that enforcement of "Equality of Outcomes," despite having relatively fewer male candidates to compare against?
When people presume that a 50/50 gender distribution is the goal, and that falling short of that is evidence of discrimination, then yes, they are arguing for equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity would allow for skews in various fields to work themselves out naturally.