[jonahrd]

And what if there's a young software engineering student who's inspired by this talk and decides to keep studying against her preconceived notions that this is a "field for men"?

Hosting more women speakers at conferences helps to fix the broken stereotype of software engineers all being white dudes, which in turns fixes the problem of fewer women and minorities becoming interested in STEM.

[new_corp_dev]

And what if said young software engineering student reads Bryana's blog post and realizes that Bryana may only have been chosen to speak because she is a woman? What sort of inspiration would that be for other women to join STEM? How should anyone view speakers that have been invited to speak based primarily on their race or gender?

It would set the whole industry back by decades. Not because women got involved, but because they became token minorities instead of competent colleagues. For an entire generation, minority STEM students would face impostor syndrome in themselves, and have to work twice as hard to prove themselves because everyone would assume they got to where they are based on "positive discrimination" instead of merit and ability.

[jonahrd]

But this argument rests on the case that Bryana was solely chosen because she's a women, when in reality she was chosen because she had the qualifications (much like some of her other colleagues) and is also a woman who had to overcome more challenges to make it to where she is now. That's a pretty interesting and under-represented vantage point to hear a speech from.

This all relates to the same debate about affirmative action that's been happening since the 60's. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/5/19/bernard-davis-an... This guy (happens to be my grandfather) argued essentially the same point as you: that black students would be accepted to the medical school based on a lowered standard, and end up graduating as less qualified doctors as their white counterparts. This in turn would lead people to have a general mistrust of black doctors, because they would be seen as only being in their place through affirmative action, and not through merit. That is definitely a scenario to avoid, and also definitely one worth considering in debate.

However, this has proven not to be the case, and Harvard is still viewed as ranking among the greatest institutions in the world, even though they have been admitting minorities to their program since the 70's! In fact, here is a more recent Crimson article highlighting some points in defense of promoting people in minority groups: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/7/affirmative-acti...

If we want to decrease the gender inequality in STEM, we need to take concrete action and promote the hard work of women and other underrepresented groups in order to slowly shift the male-dominated culture to one that's more diverse.