The problem is that there are few female developers to start with, and they are all heavily recruited by large software companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) already. The larger companies have big budgets to devote to this and encourage the very small number of women developers to go work there.
If you just sit back and wait for more women to apply, they are going to get picked up by the bigger companies before you even get a chance to interview them.
It's also difficult to attract that small group of women devs to apply to work at your company when there are no women developers there currently. The larger companies already have a bunch of women developers, so it can suggest to future candidates that these companies are great places for them to work (i.e. they won't be discriminated against at these companies). It may be that your small company is also a great place, it's just that you don't have any women to vouch for that.
So in Fog Creek's case, we increased the number of women applicants by making it our goal to get more women to apply. That's the only thing we changed. Our interview process stayed exactly the same.
Having worked with Kamens, including interviewing the same candidates, I can't even entertain the idea that the interviews were rigged in some way, which is you abhorrent implication.
We see 2:1 male to female ratios all the time, and no one bats an eye. But when it gets flipped we need to figure out why?
Regardless of how it came to be, this is a win for our industry, as it sets an example that the numbers don't need to be so heavily skewed towards men.
Simple probability. A 2:1 male environment is completely reasonable in a gender neutral process, whereas a 2:1 female environment is exceedingly unlikely to occur under such a process.
Is this a 3 sigma deviation? Maybe. Or could it be that, on average, women might be drawn to educational software more than other types? Doesn't sound unreasonable.
Regardless, your insistence on an explanation shows that you're still stuck in the bad old days.
Some hard numbers would help this discussion.
In the same vein it is interesting to ask why most companies receive more male applications. Without asking these questions, how can there ever be an improvement (except for random luck)?
Internships tend to be a bit less one-sided, but the skew is still quite high.
This sucks. I want to receive those resumes, for what I hope are obvious reasons, but I don't ever receive them.
Given that, I can't help but wonder whether:
1) You have a completely different applicant pool
or
2) You somehow changed your application process in a way that resulted in a 2:1 female:male ratio.
I don't think those are terrible questions to have. The answers could be enlightening.
David, Dylan and Jamie are all men yes?
If any piece of evidence from the above points to an organization that values quotas over excellence in interns and the work expected of them, well please raise the alarm.
No one is accusing you of using quotas and no is saying you do not value excellence in interns. What's being asked is why was there such a steep increase in the number of female interns accepted? Were there more female applicants? Were interview questions changed? How did this result come about?