Texas public universities started a program to admit all high school students that ended up in the top 10% of their class. This covers white kids from the wealthy suburbs of Dallas as well as latino kids from the valley and black kids from inner Houston.

The educational system of Texas is in no way a good example of fixing privilege issues. It assumes that all students come to school on equal footing. The 10% that get automatically accepted to a state uni are going to be biased on class. Also, the idea that they can be admitted doesn't mean that they can attend uni.

It's not a simple as what you describe.

> What does that look like? Do you know of anyone doing something like this today?

Just speculating here, but it might be like applying for a scholarship: you have to justify why you need it more than anyone else. Some set of individuals clearly have the most need, and they should get the assistance. A double blind review process should eliminate implicit bias against gender, race, or other categories.

I bet 99% of those approved would be exactly the minorities all of these targeted groups are trying to support, but there's still that 1% that might just be a "cis white male" with no support and a truly heart breaking story. Such a person has little help available at the moment. I can think of a few logistical issues with this approach, but we're just speculating here.

> My only thought is the symphony auditions where the judges cannot see the applicant (hidden by a screen).

Yes, that's a great example. The point is to remove possible sources of implicit bias and focus on merit.

They've actually tried this at some companies, with double-blind interviews and such, but they ended up with largely the same outcomes as the status quo.

One possibility is that the bias in our industry isn't as significant as is typically portrayed. Another is that the biases happen earlier and lead to minorities either being less qualified or appearing less qualified, on average. But then efforts should be focused on helping individuals in those earlier stages, like training programs or financial support to improve their qualifications.

> No one likes quotas, set asides. But right now it's the lesser evil.

They might be justifiable if they were actually effective, but it's literally impossible for them all to be effective. Taking gender hiring quotas as an example, only about 20% of CS grads are women, and this ratio is about the standard for CS employment across the industry. But every tech company now wants a 50/50 gender ratio. That's quite literally impossible with the current labour pool, and pushing this agenda leads to skewed incentives, fast turnover and unqualified hires.

I'm not sure denying facts and scientific evidence is the lesser evil, because denying evidence simply won't fix anything. Evidence-driven efforts are great, but most I've read about don't fall in this category. Perhaps I only hear about the failures though, so that could be confirmation bias at work. Still, I would think denouncing any efforts that deny evidence would be uncontroversial, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

"you have to justify why you need it more than anyone else."

Except it's the organization that has the need in this sense, not the applicant. The organization has an open position, and a disparity they are trying to correct.

I think you're missing some context. We're talking about what it might look like to provide financial or other aid to people who need it (like Outreachy does), but without discriminating based on group membership.

There's no assumption that the applicants are necessarily in need of financial aid, so scholarships seem like an incorrect comparison to make.

And yet, the ones who don't need it don't get it, which is the whole point.

On,

>That's quite literally impossible with the current labour pool, and pushing this agenda leads to skewed incentives, fast turnover and unqualified hires.

It is only impossible _globally_. If you're a company that people have heard of paying the kind of wages companies people have heard of pay, you could absolutely achieve 50/50 gender balance without compromising on quality. That kind of company is _already_ only considering the top 0.5% of on-paper candidates.

Globally, you're right, large companies doing this will starve companies less able to find and buy that talent of equal hiring practices, and _that_ sucks, but capitalism doesn't reward companies for doing things which benefit their competitors in the short term.

> If you're a company that people have heard of paying the kind of wages companies people have heard of pay, you could absolutely achieve 50/50 gender balance without compromising on quality.

I already acknowledged this possibility, but pointed out that it leads to skewed incentives, fast turnover and unqualified hires.

You'd have to start hiring candidates for reasons other than qualifications, or offering pay significantly above market rate for only that gender. This strategy would also make poaching women attractive, thus driving fast turnover and further wage inflation. This demand/wage inflation would then attract plenty of far less qualified women, thus diluting the talent pool, but the skewed incentives simply can't filter out these candidates. I don't see how this would be sustainable if gender parity were viewed as desirable in and of itself, without regard for the overall economics of the business.

Practically, do you really think achieving gender parity would yield such a huge competitive advantage that these factors can be completely ignored? I think we'd have seen something like that by now, but women's pay is still roughly on par with men's in STEM, so clearly gender parity isn't economically viewed as the huge advantage you portray it to be.