I read in comments from people who claimed to work for Google - diversity initiatives in Google aim to bring the diversity close to the male-female ratio in the applicant pool. Couple of other companies I know where number of employees are in thousands, the diversity initiative aims to achieve something similar. That does not seem like a bad idea at all.

Humans are complex beings. Is interest in a specific field or profession a function of only gender? Would not the surrounding environment, role models, religion, books read, experiences in life and various other countless factors affect a person's interest and character?

I don't think he was wilful. He was wrong to reduce a complex subject like human interests and behaviour into a simple statistical function.