[tomp]

> We can be pretty confident that if 50% of the population are women then 50% of the best candidates for a given job, by natural aptitude, are women

You shouldn't be as confident as you're probably wrong. Women have on average better verbal intelligence, and men have on average better spacial intelligence. So we can be confident there are jobs where either men or women are more likely to be best candidates.

[roenxi]

No, I'm right. If you want to pick some super-specialist job that requires top 1% verbal skills then sure you want a woman doing it, but most jobs only require slightly above-average skills which will fall into a roughly 50-50 split.

And even then you can't reasonably claim that most jobs are better performed by spatial or verbal thinking. Both tend to have their moments.