What you have in CS now isn't "blind meritocracy." If the male culture is turning away qualified women, you don't have a meritocracy.
Given the assumption that it's a meritocracy, then qualified women won't be turned away.
If women are being turned away, then they should be being turned away at a rate equal to men, relative to their applicant pool.
If there are less women applying in the first place, then the problem exists in the educational\ preparatory stages of one's career. The solution should be directed there, not trying to correct for the problem afterwards.
I'm saying that the assumption that it's a meritocracy is incorrect.
> If there are less women applying in the first place, then the problem exists in the educational\ preparatory stages of one's career.
Education doesn't change the fact that ambitious women don't want to be in the 10-20% minority in an engineering company. Hell, it doesn't change the fact that they don't want to be the 10-20% minority in computer science programs. Careers are up-hill battles as it is, and who wants to add the additional challenge of being a minority? People who want to maximize their potential success are going to go into professions where they don't have to deal with these headwinds.
And that phenomenon undermines your meritocracy.
Because they're sexist. If you don't discriminate on sex then entering an engineering company you're in the 100% majority of people.
So are women saying "I'm not going in that company it's got people in it". That would be silly. So, they must be discriminating against the companies simply because of the sex of the workers.
That leaves you with the point that you have to alter your hiring process because women want to be sexist ...
So ignore meritocracy and kowtow to sexism?
Is there any evidence that this is happening?
Being a minority sucks, and ambitious people realize that in any organization getting to the top is as much about social ability and politick-ing as it is about ability. Working as a woman in a male-dominated culture may have zero impact on your work, but it's sure as hell going to have an impact on how easy it is for someone to form work relationships and leverage them to get ahead in the organization.