Wait, WHY do you want more women? Are they more skilled somehow? Because if not, that's sexist. You should be hiring the best person for the job, not looking for people that fit a certain concept in your mind.
Any time the gender discussion comes up, a bunch of people suck all the air out of the conversation by burning straw men. Here, let me head some of them off: it's not your fault there aren't many women in tech; no, we shouldn't give less qualified people jobs; yes, there clearly are fewer women then men going to school for engineering and CS.
All male and all female offices are not ideal for various(and sometimes different) reasons.
[edit: sorry for asking. Didn't realize asking a poster to explain their reasoning was frowned upon here. ]
Do you consciously model ways to give criticism that your female coworkers will feel comfortable with? Does it help them open up and criticize each other? What works? (This is a subject I have an interest in in a personal context as well, since I sometimes get baffled and frustrated by indirect communication and would like to be better at coaxing women to be more direct, which is hard if the relationship isn't already close.)
Also, I'm surprised that women have a hard time taking criticism. I didn't expect that at all. Can you say more?
Also having a mix of genders in an office in my experience leads the natural cliques that form in any office to be more interdependent. I'm not a sociologist or claim I can explain it but that has been my experience in working in almost purely female or male environments and working in mixed environments.
Having someone in the extreme minority will always make them feel like an outsider.
As for cliques, I don't have much experience with them. Within university departments, I only observed three particular flavors of clique: domain specific (math/physics, number theory), chinese, and women. I suppose you are right - the woman clique did have women from multiple domains in it.
As for being in the minority, I don't agree with you there. In all walks of my daily life, I am an extreme (racial) minority. In the past month or two, excluding family, I've had a conversation with perhaps 2-3 people of the same race as me. It isn't an issue at all - right now, I feel like less of an outsider than during past periods where I dealt with lots of people like me.
[1] Examples would include every field I've ever worked in: trading stocks, medical imaging, quantum physics.
It is possible you just didn't recognize the cliques. They aren't always super obvious even when they are prevalent.
I like racial minorities in the workplace are a different concern than gender minorities. Mindless discrimination based on race is very much noticed and looked down on these days. I wouldn't say its the same about gender. If all your co-workers always forgot to invite you to lunch or assumed you wouldn't want to do what they do because of your race you would be right to compare.
Diversity is good. It also prevents the office from becoming a chauvinistic sausagefest, where people all of a sudden feel like it's ok to make inappropriate jokes because they're surrounded by guys.
Unfortunately I also get a disproportionate amount of resumes skewed male, sheer statistics are going to say I'm going to hire more men. And I'm still going to feel like I'm the asshole when these "not enough women in tech" posts come around.
Despite the fact that you actually would be sexually discriminating.