How do you measure talent while recruiting? The person with the most accomplished resume or who can answer your technical questions most aptly? Both are only proxies, albeit usually pretty good ones, for measuring talent. Perhaps that interviewee was nervous or maybe they're really really bright, but just haven't been programming as long as some of their counterparts.

Tracy Chou of Quora wrote a really insightful post about being a female software engineer: http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineerin.... It really opened my eyes to some of the reasons why maybe there aren't more women who even get started in the field - even if there isn't outright prejudice, women in engineering still face a lot of challenges that men simply don't. Sure, you can argue that you should give the most talented person the job, but keep in mind that the methods we use for measuring talent are hugely subject to circumstance. For example, I'll bet the average age when most female engineers start programming is higher, so they simply haven't been programming as long. It is rather naive to believe that talent is the primary indicator of whether someone gets a job or gets into a particular school - success is just as much a product of circumstance, getting the necessary opportunities, and other external conditions as it is of one's own inherent talent and work-ethic. And let's face it, women in software engineering face a wholly different set of circumstances than their male counterparts, so let's stop pretending that it's just about talent.