> What I've always found odd is when a company advertises something like "we have 50% women on the programming team" when only 20% of the programming workforce

> What I've always found odd is when a company advertises something like "we have 50% women on the programming team" when only 20% of the programming workforce is female. > That's not really fair is it? The company is overly diverse if anything. In a way they're stealing women from the workforce of other companies. This was always a mystery to me as well. Unless you are expanding the workforce, it's a zero-sum game, so exhibiting a higher ratio merely means that someone else must have a lower ratio. Aiming for a higher ratio isn't empowering at all. If a 50/50 ratio is to be meaningful, you have to fix the workforce ratio, first.