(In my experience, if you want to talk about "groups" in programming companies, it's mostly geeks vs. non-geeks, with men and women in both groups.)
To make two separate groups equal? I don't understand what is complex about that. They are separate groups according to how they are often treated in the workplace.
For example, from my very rough memory:
- People were upset there weren't more women in the armed forces.
- The armed forces lowered PT requirements for women so that more women could make it in (less pushups, slower mile times, can sit down in formation)
- Currently people are mad because that treats women differently. Among other things, it gives a sense that all women are weak and need extra accommodations, and that can hurt them in the eyes of men in the force.
So we have this struggle of wanting to include more women, but we have to figure out how to do it without favoritism.
There are good reasons for increasing diversity, and if that means women, with their naturally lower muscle mass get a lower PT requirement, that is not really favouritism.
Because we should be able to happily enjoy our differences in one area (gender), and still not be judged in our ability to perform something completely unrelated (programming).
Obviously a social programme centered on cupcake tasting and yoga is catering to who one might consider stereotypical girls. But there are (I guess, I'm a white male in an engineering job after all) many ladies who don't want to disguise as androgynous (un-gendered?) trying to fit in, just to be able to have the job they want...
And, frankly spoken, I for one welcome a more gender balanced office. Because we are diverse and should enjoy interaction with each other. Work related (as equal peers) or not (as different gendeds).
Again, the goal is not to make everyone the same, but to make sure there aren't any social groups that are somehow marginalized away from society's seats of power, and software happens to be one such seats of power.
The categorization into geeks and non-geeks, while perhaps useful for identifying social cliques, is not at all useful for correcting society's power imbalances.
Hint: what the powerful have in common is not sex, but money. If you really wanted to make a better society, you would focus on eradicating that discrimination and gap. But then, that probably won't win you any friends or popularity contests, so I guess I understand why you focus on the low-hanging fruit.
I do find this easy to say, in spite of the fact that my company has exactly 1 other person of my race (out of 100+) [1]. Though I am in the other "dominant group" (engineering)...
[1] This has been the case for most of my career, and my life was not significantly different in the few cases when it wasn't true.
Just because some of us (programmers) managed to unexpectedly strike gold (in this economy) doesn't make us "dominant" in most areas of life.
Programming is still lucrative enough for most people that they chose this over the job they were originally trained for. That is one of the reasons (and not the only one) women want to be part of such groups, and there they are the minority.
Also my perception is not that development teams are necessarily "dominated" by nerds. It's a cliche which is often wrong.