If we grant that LessWrong has the power to improve its gender ratio without degrading the quality of discussion

I don't think it has a lot of power, because (1) males have higher IQ variability (so, apparently, males are two times more likely to have an IQ of 130, and average IQ on LW is 138, which should create even bigger gender imbalance), and (2.1) according to 2012 survey, LW is ~80% Myers-Briggs NT, (2.2) NT is much more prevalent in males (somewhere around 2:1), (2.3) apparently, NT's have very high average intelligence.

My guess is that we can move it a little without lowering content quality, but I doubt if anything significant is possible.

Basically, we just need to find out gender ratio of individuals with average IQ of 135-140 who are also NT's.

Btw, Yvain posted a huge comment to Ben Kuhn's post.