It is believed that there is a severe problem in the tech industry with lack of diversity, principally the fact that there are too few women. It is thought that this is something that needs to be fixed. Tim Cook on Apple's diversity report:
“Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say up front: As CEO, I’m not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They’re not new to us, and we’ve been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we’re committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products.”
There is a practical argument that can be made, and indeed often is made, that the reason why diversity is good is because it creates a broader perspective in an organization. That's certainly true, but the real concern is: does justice demand better diversity stats?
The tech industry seems to assume that, ceteris paribus, lack of diversity is an ill in and of itself.
But this is a confusion. It is not necessarily unjust that a company's demographics skew white and male. It would be bad only if non-white, non-male potential employees were discriminated against. That is the problem that needs fixing, and if it remains a problem in technology, then there is an absolute duty to rectify it.
Is it, though? At least racially, tech industry demographics reveal minority inclusion above the ratios in the US population. Tech employees are statistically less likely to be white than the population in general.
That leaves gender. Since gender is roughly 50/50 in general but decidedly skewed toward male in tech, there certainly seems to be a problem here. I have no first-hand knowledge of hiring practices in tech as related to women, so I will not claim that there is not continued discrimination. If there is, then it needs to be fixed, now.
But it does seem to be the case that there are fewer women wanting to be in tech. This, too, is seen as a problem by the industry. App Camp for Girls is a good example of an attempt to fix it. Maybe such outreach is necessary because our culture implicitly discourages girls who are interested in pursing careers in STEM. If so, then I am all for such measures.
But, and here's where I go heretical: it is possible that, innately, girls and women are statistically less drawn to tech than boys and men; and, if so, that's ok. Women should be given every opportunity and every benefit and every encouragement that men are given because men and women are by nature equal in dignity and deserve equal rights. There should be no discrimination.
But if it shakes out that technology is not naturally a 50/50 gender split, so what? Must we force demographics to fit the modern dogmatic assumption that equality of the sexes means sameness of the sexes?
In other words: the problem to fix is not the raw numbers, because raw numbers give no indication of cause, wether it is malicious or benign. The problem to fix is discrimination. When discrimination has been eliminated, justice is satisfied, even if the numbers are "poor".