Your counterarguments strike me as mansplainingly unreflective.<p><i>... So there are less of them.</i><p>Do you really think no-one thought of this? The objective is for ratios to reflect the general population of the area. In general, thats kindof what we should expect in a meritocracy, right?<p><i>... underrepresented because they didn&#x27;t formally or informally study engineering.</i><p>Which is obvious. Now: Why do you think that is? And what can we do about it?<p>As Itp says below &#x27;... women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.&#x27;<p>edit: I also don&#x27;t agree with the sentiment of your anecdote explaining how minorities should outwork everyone else (i.e. work harder than everyone else) if they want to get noticed<p>(Edited)