Don’t take me too literal. But to be more specific: For me it was always some kind of disappointing (somehow) to be in a group of 85% male (or even more) and 90% somehow nerdy males. (I am male, maybe important here ) If this was suffering for me, I don’t know, propably not in the stringent meaning.
I am getting sad, when I talk to girls about phyics, math and programming, and they have their own prejudices about them self, that they can’t learn it (not a teacher I am, but working with students sometimes).
I don’t have a solution for this, and creating artificial quota, I agree with you, isn’t the best, but I am nevertheless sure, that it is systemic. Not only about male and female, there are other underrepresented groups (no exact numbers checked, just a feeling).
As I said, I don’t have a solution, but we can talk about how we talk about things and people. And this how-to-talk may be e.g. that sometimes, even in this forum, it is not always about stringent technical questions with formal correct answers (fact, hypthesis, objective functions,… ), sometimes it is about people, who maybe have high pressure, come here need urgent help and don’t find the correct words and get offended by us. (Don’t get me wrong, all in all I think we do quite good here).
And we already have quite some offending posts even in this thread!