I think that's totally illogical. How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. You have no idea, and you wouldn't recruit based on those characteristics. So why recruit based on gender?
The data I've seen suggests that the penetration of these minorities in technology closely tracks their representation in society as a whole. Further, there isn't a history of discrimination against redheads and lefties in open source. Discrimination against gay people is a real problem, though it doesn't seem to have prevented equivalent representation of gay people in tech.
But you could make a similar argument about representation of other minorities -- African Americans, say, or Hispanics, or whatever. And it's true, that's a problem too; we should be working towards diversity of all sorts. It's true that I'm focusing my attention of gender diversity, but I'd love to learn more about efforts towards diversity along other axes. Have any pointers?
I genuinely think the main reason that people worry about gender, over any other groups, is that it's normally so clear what group people are a member of. And that's not a sound reason to do anything.
I also genuinely think that some men cause a fuss about proportion of women in tech groups, simply because they'd like to meet and be able to hit on more women.
I see it like this: lack of diversity is a bug on our community. I'd like to fix it, so I work on fixing these bugs. Right now, the information I have available tells me that gender diversity is the worst of the bugs under the "diversity" label, and it's also one I think I have the skills to tackle. This doesn't mean that other bugs are less important, or less worth solving. I happen to believe that this bug is the one that's most worth my time to tackle.
Yes, I do see lack of diversity -- in all forms -- as an issue in our community. There are other minorities besides women that're systematically discouraged from entering tech; we should do something about that. Hopefully our fix for the gender bugs can be abstracted and applied in other areas.
This is not just an abstract inconvenience either. Whenever you are part of a historically marginalized minority -- whether by color, gender, or nationality -- it will likely be more uncomfortable for you to enter fields where you are the only person from your group. This is particularly true for women.
Not only are sexist comments more likely when there are not a lot of women at events (see http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...), the women will also likely feel more uncomfortable because of the disproportion. Let me quote a posting on our outreach mailing list thread from a woman to elaborate:
"I have definitely never experienced anything threatening or offensive at a Ruby group meeting. But, you show up at an event where there are 50 men or more to 3 women, and you grow to expect some double-takes. Some women, like me, are okay with that. A lot aren't. And it makes it hard to show up alone or when you don't know anyone if you know you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. A man can show up at boston.rb for the first time and not have anyone pay the least attention. A woman cannot.
"There's some critical mass that needs to be reached before that's not true anymore, and it's just hard work to get there. There needs to be enough women who don't care if they stick out, so the women who do care don't stick out so much. And you need to make plans to meet the women you know there, so they already know someone. That could be a component of any project night, outreach, or mentorship effort -- encouraging people to come to the meetings, and affirmatively planning to meet them there."
I hope these points carry at least a little weight for you. Thank you for raising the challenge.