Moving into dangerous ground, here. I was going to label this slide "Hire Women" but decided I might lose the message. Let me explain myself a bit. I am not advocating preferential hiring. What I'm advocating is re-thinking the skill set required for a long haul. Once that's done, you'll find that the male/female ratio in your candidate pool shifts dramatically. Let's shift back to ultrarunning for just a bit to see what I mean.
At Boston, the world's most prestigious marathon, the median finishing time for men is about 10% faster than women. At Western States, the world's most prestigious 100, the median finishing time for men is around 2% faster than women (some years, it's slower). Why? Because the advantages that make men faster at short distances (essentially, better power to weight ratio) don't really count for much in an ultra. In an ultra, you are never running anywhere near you maximum power output. What matters is that you keep your head in the game and don't quit. Women do this just as well as men.
If you staff a long IT project looking for the very best technical talent, your candidate base is primarily recent graduates from top science and engineering schools. This is very heavily biased towards young men. If, instead, you look for the qualities that really matter in a long project (diligence, patience, responsibility, and, yes, technical competence), your candidate base will be much more diverse. Simply selecting the best people from this larger pool should yield a reasonably balanced team. No preferential treatment is needed.
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