To my mind, this is the key point. It may be likely that a team with e.g. diverse skills/personalities will end up being gender diverse. But to assume that it has to be gender diverse, or that you can achieve a diversely skilled team by enforcing gender diversity seems to lapse into lazy gender stereotyping about how e.g. women's skills/perspectives are limited by their gender.
And by background I surely mean gender, but also things like educational background, nationality, personality etc.
Nobody should brute force for gender diversity just for the symbolic victory. Diversity done right has its benefits, but like all paradigms you have to use your brains when implementing it. Refusing to do so and then after a half assed attempt declaring it doesn’t work, is what you sadly witness quite often.
I know multiple women in tech and every single one of them had their gender used against them many times during their careers. Hiring men and women like in regular fields won’t hurt tech at all. I don’t really get why it has to be a big thing at all.
If you want someone who can contribute to a team in a certain way, then hire for that.
But this isn’t soley about race, nationality or gender, you have to find a good mix also in terms of personalities, skillsets etc. I always found system theory to be a useful abstraction when thinking about this. System theory asks the question which function a member of the system (the team) will take, given their personality etc. You cannot decide this from top down, it will just happen. Like in a family, where you can visit after 10 years and instantly, without beeing aware of it you put yourself into a certain position.
The question is: which function does a team/family member fulfill for the system?
A systemic view means the answer to this question depends on the constellation of the whole team and not just on individual members.
So my answer would be: make a team where everybody gets to align their personality with the function they will have within that social construct, make everybody a valuable part to the whole and make everybody realize, they are better off as a whole.
A good experienced team is like magic just because everybody precisely knows what their function within it is, and having a different background is part of these functions as well.