Thoughts on the day...

So it would seem that there is a huge push to get girls/women/ladies/female persons into STEM and programming specifically. There are people working on "scholarships" or "free tickets to cons" and such for them as underrepresented class of persons. I am wondering the actual specific reasons? Is it because we have an actual shortage of programming persons? Or because this class of persons desires to be in programming, but is somehow being shut out? There doesn't necessarily seem to be lack for this class of persons in other STEM fields. Could it also be due to the fact that this class of persons is traditionally paid less than their boy/man/dude/male person counterpart performing the same job as an attempt to lower the cost to businesses employing such? I am curious of the pushes that are being done, because I never trust the motivation given for anything that affects so many aspects of something.

Without turning this into an essay, I want to raise a few more questions?
Does the industry gain anything in the field from diversity itself? Does a programming team benefit from having a person of a specific gender, race, religion, national origin <insert the rest of the eoe protected classes> from the fact that they are in fact a member of that class.
Should the industry and its players change itself, (customs, culture, mores, language, and so on) to allow for such integration, or would the marriage of such new culture to an existing culture naturally change it organically?
Is this done in other industries where they are made up lacking a certain class of person and strong encouragement, support etc. is made to interest, entice, or otherwise bring members of that lacking class into it?