The person they're asking said that they dedicated a extra resources to try and hire female candidates because the office was all males. That implies that they were hiring specifically for gender, not for any specific skillset.

The parent post? Evidently, for whatever reason, male applicants and coworkers are a problem for their organization, so they go out of their way and invest in "additional resources" to hire female candidates from the hiring pool. They're not hiring on merit, but on gender.

How exactly do you hire for female candidates without discriminating against the "overwhelming" body of male applicants? I would be really interested to know how this goes on behind the scenes: do you have open positions but cherry pick female candidates while disregarding male candidates from the get-go?

If it's anything like conferences trying to increase diversity numbers, they don't specifically target one gender, they focus their recruiting efforts on sites and locations that typically have a much higher representation, like a girls college, or a girls hacker group. That way they aren't actively saying "we won't accept male applicants", but they ensure that 90% of the applicants will be from the target demographic.

>We did eventually find a few great female applicants, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time dedicated specifically to that goal.

How is this not sexism? Replace female with male in the above quote and tell me it isnt sexist.

Diversity is generally accepted to be a positive thing. Targeting women specifically furthers that goal. Targeting men specifically furthers no goal.

So yes, sexism is not symmetric. Same with race.

How much money and time goes into hiring more female septic tank cleaners? Garbage men? Construction workers? Truck drivers? If sexism isn't symmetric then feminism isnt about equality.

You start looking in different places for your applicants.