The null hypothesis is to assume there is innate equivalence; the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise and the attempts I've seen so far are lacking.
The null hypothesis would be to accept the state of things as they are.
If there are very few women in computer science, you wouldn't assume it was due to some conspiracy or "systematic discrimination" without any proof. You wouldn't enact policies of reverse discrimination (affirmative action) to correct some supposed imbalance of the system.
You'd simply admit you don't know why, and search for proof of the reason.
A more correct null hypothesis is to accept the state of things as they are given signal from across time, though. Which raises the immediate question of why most programmers were women until recently.
I'm sorry, this statement is extraordinarily confusing to me. Why on earth is the null hypothesis that there is innate equivalence? This seems so precisely backward that I'm going to need you to justify it before I can agree. A lifetime full of thousands of interactions with both men and women on a daily basis have consistently shown me that there are huge differences between the sexes.
The fact that we are all equal does not mean we are all equivalent. I suspect you may not be making this distinction.
