Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas.
Towards a group that is judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.
But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone?
My own experience as a transgender person is that there are people who, as my gender presentation has shifted, really seem to view me as less competent. Not in a "girl's can't code" way, but like steadily viewing me as more junior, needing more hand holding, giving me simpler tasks, that kind of thing.
It's subtle enough to make me constantly second guess myself, but it's noticeable.
It happens in interviews, too. It's very easy to rationalize biases within certain bounds. Those kind of things - and toxic environments - are what needs to be corrected most in today's tech workplace.
Of course correcting toxic environments early in the pipeline would be the best, because then the men that share those environments don't normalize them, either! But it's not fair to ignore the adult realities of the current working world and just dump all the blame on the early part of the pipeline.
Author would suggest lowering the bar [for women] would only reinforce such stereotypes, do you agree or disagree?
Of course the trick is that you don't need to see the candidates or talk to them, just listen to their playing. In software, we would need to find some similarly effective way to measure anonymized performance.
In fact, completely aside from fixing gender and racial biases, that's something we could really use just to make good hiring decisions! I don't believe anyone really knows how to make consistently great hires in software.
For a start, the hiring decision could be based on gender-anonymized feedback from the interviewer(s), although that obviously wouldn't fix any underlying biases in the feedback itself.
I think their results were confusing and uncertain, but the methodology seemed brilliant and I think should be the gold-standard for tech interviews. If we keep it phone it would remove other subliminal biases (attractiveness, physical disabilities) as an additional benefit.
Other than doing thought experiments to try to correct for biases... It's hard.
One thing, and it's a small thing, is noticing if people in a group seem to have something to say, but seem unable to say it because they won't interrupt/talk over people (or that keeps happening)... Once you notice it, clearing a space for them to actually talk can help.
It requires being tuned in not just to the conversation, but the people in it, which is itself difficult. But I have seen it happen and it can be powerful.
There are a lot of little things like that which can be worked out, and I have no list of them or any magic wand solution.
Basically? Pay some attention to your biases and how you - and those around you - are treating others, especially those who might have internalized negative stereotypes and be struggling with imposter syndrome and all of that. Emotional awareness really helps.