Cass R. Sunstein in Free Markets and Social Justice offers a chapter with an interesting perspective called "Why Markets Don't Stop Discrimination." The book is actually one of the more readable economics works I've seen, and the author gives a more in-depth account of why competitive markets would normally be believed to work the way you're saying you expect them to work.
The basic idea is that even if you operate in a competitive market, your customers and associates may not: and due to this, competitive markets can sometimes only float the ball to some socially-appropriate level. So, let's talk about someone who stops doing business with you because they know your programmers are female and they hold some subconscious belief that female code is of lower quality. (I mean, if you called them on it they would say "no, of course not!" but somewhere deep inside they'd prefer the familiar and they discriminate institutionally rather than individually.) Now your incentives to discriminate are bound up in a complex: that complex contains their tastes, and what they're willing to pay to get a product which tastes right to them. If they're in a very competitive market they might not be able to afford any overhead, but if they're a personal user, or they are turning a profit, they get to choose based on their tastes alone and then your financial incentive is to also institutionally discriminate. The whole point is that discrimination might be "economically rational" while nondiscrimination might be "social justice" and therefore they can come at odds -- which is more or less the topic of the book.
The basic idea is that even if you operate in a competitive market, your customers and associates may not: and due to this, competitive markets can sometimes only float the ball to some socially-appropriate level. So, let's talk about someone who stops doing business with you because they know your programmers are female and they hold some subconscious belief that female code is of lower quality. (I mean, if you called them on it they would say "no, of course not!" but somewhere deep inside they'd prefer the familiar and they discriminate institutionally rather than individually.) Now your incentives to discriminate are bound up in a complex: that complex contains their tastes, and what they're willing to pay to get a product which tastes right to them. If they're in a very competitive market they might not be able to afford any overhead, but if they're a personal user, or they are turning a profit, they get to choose based on their tastes alone and then your financial incentive is to also institutionally discriminate. The whole point is that discrimination might be "economically rational" while nondiscrimination might be "social justice" and therefore they can come at odds -- which is more or less the topic of the book.
I found it an interesting idea.