Not unheard solution. Russia did something similar in the 1920s, but it turned out to be an epic fail.

People normally only care about poor diversity in careers where the pay is good - you rarely hear people complaining about the diversity of cleaners, milk delivery personnel or train drivers.

If the pay dropped, I have a strong feeling that the calls for increased diversity in tech would cease quickly, replaced with complaints about diversity in accountancy or some other high net worth career.