[mkeedlinger]

While I can't speak for others, I'm not sure that most people here think there is a gender gap because of inability on the part of women, but instead maybe a difference in general interests between the sexes.

I'm also not so sure about your claim that "there are more than enough qualified women to fill tech jobs in roughly equal proportion with men." I rarely have the chance to talk to women who are similarly interested in computers, and at my university there are very few women who are in any of my CS classes, despite that I feel that those who are there feel welcome (hopefully. I am not all-knowing, this is my best guess).

I think a better solution to the problem than pressuring people into hiring women simply for the virtue of being female and aiming for 50% would be to call sexism what it is. Call out when people who do the bad of hiring a less qualified man instead of a woman (this is a contrived example, hopefully you're understanding my point).

Solving sexism with more sexism probably won't work.

These are my honest thoughts, hope that's ok.

[saas_co_de]

> I rarely have the chance to talk to women who are similarly interested in computers

This is probably true, but the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is one of those things that men have made up to exclude women.

In order to have gender equality you have to identify these areas of gender difference and eliminate them from hiring criteria.

> pressuring people into hiring women simply for the virtue of being female

That is the mischaracterization that everyone falls back on. They assume that if you have a gender balanced team it is because you hired people "because they are women."

That logic implies that those women are not qualified for the job and that you could never build a gender balanced team with qualified women.

Until we make gender balanced teams the norm people are going to keep thinking like that, which is why it is so important to take corrective action.

[mkeedlinger]

> the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is one of those things that men have made up to exclude women.

I didn't say that they need passion. I am saying, however, that I am less likely to go into medicine because I am not interested in it. Maybe the same could be the case for women? (meaning, if there is a general trend that less women are interested, then less will join said field of work, because it is their choice not to).

> That logic implies that those women are not qualified for the job and that you could never build a gender balanced team with qualified women.

You have a good point. This sentence does have a negative connotation as you say, but it is not exclusively said. Could it also be possible that a push to hire more females (explicitly because of needed gender balance, something that is, in my opinion, contrived) has happened enough recently that people's minds go there first?

> Until we make gender balanced teams the norm people are going to keep thinking like that, which is why it is so important to take corrective action.

Interesting point. I'm not willing to say you're wrong, because you might be right. I'll admit, I thought that less women graduate with CS degrees than men though. Am I wrong? If not, how do we get more women to enter that major? And what if they don't want to simply because they're not interested?

edit: I appreciate that we can talk about this btw, and that you seem to respect my opinion. I think this is a valuable part of this discussion. Thanks.

[saas_co_de]

> thought that less women graduate with CS degrees than men though

This is absolutely true but it is also true that there are many successful people working in the tech industry at all levels with very little formal comp sci education.

If men can get software engineering jobs with no formal comp sci education, which they certainly can, then the fact that there is an imbalance in degrees does not mean that we have to have an imbalance in employment.

The low representation of women in CS at university level needs to be addressed as well but the best way to do that is by making software development a job that women want and believe that they can succeed in.

People go to college to get training for a career and so if women feel like software development is a profession that excludes women they aren't going to waste their time and money training for it.

"the percentage of CS-degree holders who were women peaked in the 1980s at 34% and has been on a downward trend ever since, even though women currently earn 57% of all undergraduate degrees."

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why-aren...

The fact that there has been a sharp decline in female participation in CS in just the past few decades demonstrates that this is a temporary anomaly and not some "fundamental difference between genders" and further demonstrates that large changes are possible with the correct policies.

[slededit]

> the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is one of those things that men have made up to exclude women.

I mean if you've been programming since you were 8 and consider it your identity its not that far to go into believing that anyone who is good has to have the same background. Gender doesn't have anything to do with it.

For what its worth I thought this way until it was proven otherwise to me after enough time in the industry.