[eadmund]

> Your assertion that hiring more women will lower standards is premised on a belief that men are inherently better.

You are incorrect. Let's imagine a group of ten men and ten women: we want to hire four in total. Let's assume that we can reduce a potential employee's worth down to a single number from 1 to 10, in order to simplify the example. The men are rated [1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10]; the women are rated [3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10]. In this example the women are better on average (5.6) than the men (5.5) — but hiring the top four candidates results in hiring three men [9, 9 & 10] and one woman [10].

This is because while the mean woman is better than the mean man, the standard deviation of skills is more widely distributed across men than women in the example: more men are excellent, but also more men are terrible (in the example, the lowest three candidates are men!).

[mike00632]

If we're going to contrive an instance that will result in a gender gap then why not just say we hire only 3 people? That would be a perfectly contrived example that would illustrate what you're trying to say.

Beyond your contrivances, I take issue with you suggesting that employees can (or should) be rated on a linear scale. Companies have very specific needs and maybe a candidate who is a "2" on your scale is a "10" at fulfilling what the company needs.

I'll say again too that the value of diversity doesn't need to manifest itself in every individual.