[bashmydotfiles]

I believe a better barrier to entry to focus on would be the representation of women in tech rather than qualifications. Symlinkk, I agree with you regarding this comment.

I also believe that computer programming is the easiest field to find out if someone who is in charge of hiring is potentially biased. For example, you can have two candidates - candidate A who is a white male and candidate B who is a woman of color. If candidate B does better on the technical interview (all of her answers are more efficient, she answered the questions faster than candidate A), but candidate A gets chosen then it's easy to call out bias. That's an aspect of programming jobs that I love - that all of it is based on your qualifications rather than outside factors (of course that depends on who is hiring you and the company).

The real issue is getting women and people of color to want to get into tech in the first place. For some people, when making a career choice they look towards representation within that field. For some people, this might deter them. When you've been faced with microaggressions most of your life in certain spaces then you might want to avoid those spaces. For example, there was an article on HN a while back about women in technical lead roles. Within that article there was the story of a latina woman who is a head researcher and she has gotten asked often / people have assumed that she is the cleaning lady of the building. In my own experience I'm a mixed person and I've faced a ton of microaggressions that have made me uncomfortable in places I've been - like people asking me "Where are you from" and I tell them I'm from <insert state here> and then they reply with, "Where are you REALLY from?." That question has always made me feel like I'm not supposed to be in America - that I'm unexpected and I've deviated from the norm.

I'd suggest checking out https://www.devcolor.org/ and reading some of the personal stories of black software engineers. It's really enlightening to read about some of the microaggressions they've faced in the work place and how that has affected their career.