We happily take anyone qualified and I get my bonus. But as mentioned, percentage of female employees is a KPI and it makes my boss looks good and it makes the CEO happy in all hands meetings.
One was a female applicant. I was reading her assignment and felt like it was subpar and my decision was a thumbs down. Later we went forward with the application to the technical interviews because it was a female and we "really needed to hire one" (to be clear, I didn't even know it was a female until my decision is overruled. We don't receive CVs or names while reviewing home assignments)
The other was a minority from a different country. My decision was thumbs down because the applicant basically lied in his CV about his past experience. HR overruled that by saying something like "...in his culture it is hard for people to admit their weaknesses..." and to top it off "we don't have anyone in our company from country X!" and he got hired.
So yea, positive reinforcement means you are not really looking for qualification and most things can be ignored to fill some quotas. And you won't be getting that bonus when someone else refers a minority that gets hired.
I have played the poverty card before regarding student loans.
I guess answering this question "the wrong way" would get a lot of butthurt people showing up to this thread, so feel free to not answer.
So if you actually believe there is a benefit to having a team of men and women (I do), then it's not "wrong" to let that guide you to the woman when any score above a 50% indicates someone who will be able to actually do the work.
Usually what I see is faster movement through the recruiting pipeline. In your case, the woman scores 58% a week before the man takes the test. There's no overt pressure to just accept her score and move on. She's just here, qualified, and ready to save us from having to do more interviews haha.
I don't have a poignant take on whether that's a good or bad thing. It definitely feels better than how I imagine having to pick between the two would, thought it still feels discriminatory. Then again, diversity in some sectors is low, so perhaps it makes sense for the hiring pipeline to give them some form of advantage, and this might be the least bad option.
The whole thing is a mess of moral ambiguity.