[Jensson]

> Many departments are currently realizign they play a role in systemic discrimination, and those ratios help them understand how far they are from the mean.

I hope you realize this process started over 50 years ago. Most fields turned and are now dominated by women. The few fields that are still not dominated by women are probably that way for another reason than discrimination, women are far too good at taking over fields for some discrimination to stop them from doing so.

[dekhn]

Nothign I said in my comment above is my current position, it's a description of the thinking of people who run departments. Note that I very carefully said the idea of whether genders have preferences, is a controversial topic.

In my own field, biology, many subfields do have equal gender ratios (went from skewed to equal over last 20 years). However, having worked in Silicon Valley at tech firms, I can say that they (and the programs that feed them) still have very skewed ratios.

I'm aware of these processes and how long they've lasted; about 100 years ago, Harvard limited the number of Jewish people who could be accepted. Jews were excluded from working at "white-shoe law firms" (the ones that did high-value business deals) and instead generally ran law firms that handled "the dirty stuff" (divorces etc). Eventually, Jews became much more accepted, explicit Jewish quotas at universities were removed, and white shoe law firms hire (and have partners) who are Jewish.