>The implied argument here is that if engineers make social justice their number-one priority, then little engineering gets done. Right. And the argument I'm m

>The implied argument here is that if engineers make social justice their number-one priority, then little engineering gets done. Right. And the argument I'm making is that they are NOT mutually exclusive. A lot of people seem to be taking the road of logic implying that taking conscious actions in increasing women's participation in tech will not get engineering done. I am contesting the logic behind that. >Regardless of whether or not gender studies departments are responsible for reducing female STEM majors, women prefer working with people rather than things As someone else pointed out in the thread, the women participation in tech has actually gone down. Now, you can argue women have actually gotten MORE people friendlier, but then I'd go back to my original point: what was in tech that drove them away? I'll restate my general position once more: this is not a liberal wishy-washy 'ooh lets make all equal' argument. Diversity in tech is diversity in thought process, diversity in approaches to solutions, more resistant to specific types of failures. Just like you wouldn't want monoculture forests or crops, you don't want mono-culture engineers. I'd go one step further: even IF hiring women costs you quite reasonably in terms of 'efficiency' originally (measured by LOC's I guess? How do y'all do that?), your returns will be much higher in terms of longer term gain. EDIT: I'll bite my words a bit. Above is necessary only if you want to (or want to pretend to) care about the long-term future of your company and environment for your employees. If your strategy is to pump and dump, forget women in tech (they just are not the coding type--right-- don't even get the starTrekWarsRingsLords references?)