I personally agree with you, but if you are a federal contractor (many large organizations are) then you have to report hiring statistics by protected group status (e.g., age, ethnicity, gender) to the federal government. I think we shouldn't focus so much on it. Things like gender and ethnicity/race are what I call surface level diversity. It's diversity you can see, but not necessarily the diversity that matters. Diversity of experience, backgrounds, etc. is way more important. The reality though it that surface level diversity is what people focus on.

If a company has 1,000 men apply for a job and they hire 500 of them and also 1,000 women apply for that same job and they only hire 100 of the women, it can create a perception problem even if they company is doing nothing wrong. Lawyers will look for hiring disparities like this and try to find some reason to claim is unlawful discrimination. I sometimes work with fire departments to create their physical ability tests that job applicants have to pass before being hired. We always have way more females failing these tests when compared to men. This results in more men getting hired. It is completely justified because the job requires a certain amount of strength and physical fitness. However, from a perception standpoint, the general public are not very bright and assume that this is just a case of wanting to keep women out.

I've worked in this area for almost 20 years and there are parts of it that I love and other parts that are nonsensical and drive me crazy.