[exolymph]

No they are not equivalent. This came up with James Damore too.

Let's say there's a pool of 20 candidates, 10 male and 10 female. Since more men than women have an abiding interest in engineering, let us posit that 40% of the men are top prospects for the job, and 20% of the women are equally high-quality workers. The company is trying to fill 6 roles and has an internal mandate to hire 50% women. To serve that mandate, 1 unqualified woman will be hired, at the expense of 1 of the qualified men.

You can apply the exact same logic w/r/t race. Yes, there are legacy-of-slavery reasons why fewer blacks than whites are qualified for any given technical credential, but those are upstream of hiring decisions, and are not the job of e.g. airlines to solve, especially not at the expense of lowering standards for a crucial position like pilot.

[a_shovel]

This response is very confused. Lack of interest in the field would result in fewer female applicants, but you're describing equal numbers of applicants. This situation where women are half as likely as men to be qualified is just sexism.

The idea that airlines are passing on qualified white candidates to hire unqualified black candidates to fill a diversity quota, because there aren't enough qualified black candidates to fill it honestly, is a white supremacist conspiracy theory. Real life DEI programs don't let them do that. To a white supremacist, any number of black pilots is "just a few too many" to have hired honestly, and so there must be some hypothetical white people being "stolen" from. See GP.

[exolymph]

> Lack of interest in the field would result in fewer female applicants

Anyone in a hiring position would tell you, lack of intrinsic interest, or expertise, does not stop people from applying to an open position.