That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female.
So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.
Let me tell you how that turns out ... first hand (from a real experience).
An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones.
The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that were REALLY, REALLY bad. People laughed (or cringed) when the bad ones did their job - and it was obvious they were inept. It was so bad that I would consider these few women to be the worst I have -ever- seen (in 20+ years of a working career).
After a period of time, these women cracked and left because they could not cope with the situation. If anything, I blame the management for putting the wrong people in these roles and emphasising their inability. If anything, it may have backfired and created a perception that women just can't do the job (which is far from the truth). I remember them being away frequently on training, so there was no apparent lack of support that I could see.
Unfortunately, that's what you get when you play numbers games. You should NEVER, EVER promote anyone because of their race, religion, colour or gender... Nor should you discriminate against someone for those reasons.
That's what you get when you play numbers games poorly.
A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.
>A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.
Not necessarily and it could certainly lead to distortion due to simple error in evaluation.
If you encourage applicants from an underserved pool, do you believe the average quality of these new applicants from the pool will be equivalent to the average quality prior to the new programs?
It is hard to believe that the incompetent women managers were the only one left on the market - maybe they just did not try hard enough to find the good managers?
So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.