I dunno, a skilled writer should be capable of writing convincingly, regardless of the similarity of the character to themselves or lack thereof. I think a diverse team is probably a good thing, but not at the cost of quality and coherence.
In my career, the drive for increased gender diversity appears to have put women off, raising the obvious concern, "if it's so bad that they have to oversell it, I don't want to work there". There was almost parity when I started in computing in the late '80s, at least where I worked, but it seems that as other women have moved on, there's been fewer and fewer new recruits to replace them. Er anyway, just a random observation; or random pontificating, if you prefer!
