My understanding is that some of the issues stem from external recruitment agencies. The agencies are pitching against eachother. They state they have a gender

My understanding is that some of the issues stem from external recruitment agencies. The agencies are pitching against eachother. They state they have a gender skew higher (6:4 Male to Female) than the market data (9:1 Male to Female) to win work. They never can deliver on their targets and will blame it on location/salary etc, and place male candidates anyway. But it sews the seed that the gender balance in industry is higher than it really is and creates these issues. They become more pronounced the bigger the employer because the reality gets lost in translation.