This area is so wrong. Work actually depends on merit, suitability, performance and availability etc. Sure, you make some concessions for diversity, but on the average there are just areas where women or men perform better. To hire past this is just plain sexism.
Now, what he said to start with, male or female, if you fight and go on in the workplace, you are not really happy promotional material. Now, even in wage negotiation there are tricks. In male testosterone dominated professions, testosterone leads to submission and dominance srtuctures in chain of command. If you have a ignoramus, knuckle dragger, thug, you are in trouble. However, some psychological research in the 1980's finally got away from fanciful research onto some concrete stuff, instead of trying to prove whatever colorful idea they wanted to justify their beliefs. They found if women spoke to men contentiously in the study (classic feminism) men would get their backs up and resist. But if they spoke calmly, gently/softly (maybe also assertively, I forget) the men were far more likely to agree. Which was pretty obviouse, but not to everyone by the looks of it. Whiny little voices are grating, male or female. I heard a football player talking on the TV today in his whiny little voice, and it was so grating, it was like I could not do any work at all. Imagine that nagging, it is sort of fighting territory among males. Among certain technical males (see below) it actually produces pain due to medical issues, and they can find female voices too penetrating for work. If that suits your high performance work force, then you have issues. Another illustration, I have a freind, she is very testosterone dominant, and a real handful otherwise. I use exactly the same technique as above on her, with great success, otherwise she gets into dominance fighting mood. For short periods she goes into submissive estrogen dominance (note estrogen is produced from testosterone, as is DHT, the so called extra aggressive form of testosterone. So, it is possible to be high in all three by the looks of it. So, upside down triangular upper body shape is from testosterone, pear lower body shape estrogen I think. This is only one of a number of axis's of human personality). On either side, you have to learn to deal with what you have got in yourself, and deal with other people.
So, the tech industry itself has bigger issues than above. The tech industry draws very heavily on autism spectrum disorder Asperger's people, not the most imaginative or touchy feely, understand your feelings etc. They have greater technical ability, can be associated with being socially withdrawn, less interpersonal ability, inflexible, distinct thoughts of the way things are done, internalisation and developing self hypothesis of the world around them and how it works. Because of this, they may reach very bad conclusions and need freinds to talk with and reflect with, growing up and on the way, in order to check their understanding. There are a number of times less females with aspergers than males, but people with aspergers are prime people to hire in technical industries due to performance. Now, when you combine this with interest and aptitude of women to seek his type of work, along with comittment, maternity (it would be truelly sexist to leave it out) and all the other things, it is truely unethical to demand a 50/50 employment split in particular areas like that. Now, the truth is, that the exec jobs are probably less on the Asperger's side, but you still get the other issues. Here is the cruncher on these high commitment jobs, it is like the committment of a woman raising a family, you have to be available 24 hours a day as needed, and work longer hours, there is not time for another family (so, you have a partner looking after it). It does not leave the time for women to devote the time and raise the family (the normal work market is already producing huge issues) and many women want to do this. So, the point is that diversity will help decisions be more balance, as well as learning respect for each other, and there are naturally talented competitive females to hire as well. See, a job may strongly, or less so, favour one sex over another, but strongly or not there are still people in the other group that have more ability than their peers who would make great employees in the job. So, we can expect a job to suit between 0-100% of either group. It's not sexism, but practicality. However, wouldn't any boss that demands a 50/50 split to the detriment of the company be at risk of shareholder class action over potential looses?
The real issue is certain women, like some men, do not respect how other women work. What happens when you get high testosterone women who think, like men, that they should be top, but also all other women need this and should think like them, especially, in their eyes, those pesky little lowly house wives (thus transfering their desires onto them). Thankfully that obnoxious viewpoint seems to be less these days, but at the same time, women in sports and excercise has increased testosterone.
A finale area is concentration of benefit, and productivity. You can do a job that does not produce much or concentrate much benefit, and not get much pay. You can do a job where you are responsible for 10-1 million times more productivity and benefit, and get paid more (and hopefully not one of those sevices jobs which is just unproductive money leeching). Men tend to do and invent these sorts of jobs, like it is their children.