[orless]

It does not matter if 80% of engineers are men, it matters if 80% of engineers interviewing with your company are men.

The company can try to attract more women to interviews thus changing the 80%. Then you will hire more women, still selecting best people for the job. And it's not "hiring women intentionally" on my book.

[leereeves]

> The company can try to attract more women to interviews

That would certainly be recruiting women intentionally.

[orless]

Correct, recruiting women intentionally, not hiring intentionally.

[leereeves]

So, still discriminating.

[geofft]

I thought you were interested in finding the best people for the job? Why are you objecting to getting more people to apply?

(And to answer a potential objection: I am also in favor of mechanisms that encourage potentially-qualified non-women who would not have applied for the job to apply.)

[leereeves]

> Why are you objecting to getting more people to apply?

I'm not. Gender-biased recruiting is orthogonal to "getting more people to apply".

You can change the gender balance of applicants without increasing the number, and vice-versa.

[orless]

Technically.

[leereeves]

And there's an argument to be made for that, and people who approve.

I object most of all to the dishonesty of the company's statement when they try to suggest that they can increase the percentage of women without discriminating.

[orless]

You can increase the percentage of women without discriminating in hires, i.e. still "hiring the best people for the job". By making your company more desirable for women and thus increasing the percentage of women candidates. You can achieve this with different means like running an recruitment advertisement campaign targeted at women or not tolerating sexist behaviour or with strong commitment to work-life balance and so on.

You may say that "making your company more desirable for women" is discrimination as it makes a distinction in favor of women based on gender. Technically that would be correct. But this will not be discrimination in hiring. I.e. from the given candidate pool women will not be chosen over men because they are women.

This will not be hiring women intentionally. So the original statement in discussion may be correct.