> The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important disti

> The former may require you to leave out candidates you think are qualified, the latter does not, for a start, which strikes me as an extremely important distinction in this context.)? Incorrect. If you mandate that 20% of candidates be Y, but only 10% of candidates in the applicant pool are Y and 90% are X then on average you need to exclude 50% of qualified non-X candidates. If I have a pool of 90 X and 10 Y candidates and I have a quota of 80,20 then even if I include all 10 Y candidates I can only include 40 of the 90 X candidates. Sure, if I said that 100% have to be Y then all of the X candidates would be excluded. But even lower quota values still result in the out-group being limited. > “2 of the candidates you interview must meet these gender/racial requirements” is a mandate, but it’s not a percentage mandate. I know that’s a little pedantic, but I think it’s important pedantry, because you keep using percentages: Since there's a finite number of candidates it's still ultimately a percentage. The percentage is variable based on the total number of candidates, but it's still a percentage in the end. Quotas and caps are two sides of the same coin. Instituting a minimum representation of one group, is fundamentally the same thing as capping the representation of those who don't belong to said group.