Speaking as a bitter cynic, I don't find anything surprising about it. As far as I would expect, the first defense is that they are incompetent for the task. The second is that you cannot do anything about it because that would be the same evil discrimination. (The apparent third, that they don't want to do it, did take me by surprise. Color me impressed.)
To address your actual post, I seem to have missed the whole thing. I spent much of my career in Austin as a fairly short term contractor, with the first positions I took having a rough balance. (This was the early '90s.) There was never a question about the women's competence (or interest). I can't speak to any questions of harassment, though; I rarely got close to my coworkers. Only the last contract job was a sausage fest. :-)
Then I spent two longer stretches at UT Austin and as a NASA contractor. Both environments were fairly equal, sex wise.
On the other hand, my mother worked for a bank for 40 years and never got higher than head teller, in spite of training several men who went on to be her supervisors. And my SO has several stories of being told that women can't major in mathematics.
To address your actual post, I seem to have missed the whole thing. I spent much of my career in Austin as a fairly short term contractor, with the first positions I took having a rough balance. (This was the early '90s.) There was never a question about the women's competence (or interest). I can't speak to any questions of harassment, though; I rarely got close to my coworkers. Only the last contract job was a sausage fest. :-)
Then I spent two longer stretches at UT Austin and as a NASA contractor. Both environments were fairly equal, sex wise.
On the other hand, my mother worked for a bank for 40 years and never got higher than head teller, in spite of training several men who went on to be her supervisors. And my SO has several stories of being told that women can't major in mathematics.