i believe tolerance and respect require concerted attention to counteract cultural ignorance and bias. treating differences with equality is not about not caring or not thinking about differences--many racial and gender prejudices result from not questioning or investigating preconceived notions. it takes work to sufficiently care about ones interactions with others and thus conscientiously react to and surmount differences.

it may be that you know as many or more female hackers, founders and entrepreneurs as male, and that your cultural norm is completely surprised by the notion of gender inequality in this context. in that case: cool. your experience validates the irrelevance of gender in these roles.

or it may be that you are ignorant to inequality. whenever i want to blurt out "who cares" or "why do people care", i try to stop and think about other people's perspectives. i guess the short answer is: equality is often useful.