As a graduate student, I participated in a Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) joint site visit of the physics departments at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and University of California, Berkeley. The site visit was very valuable for both departments in highlighting not only the areas where we could improve in creating supportive environments for women, but also areas where we were doing quite well.
First I'd like to say that site visits create a better department for everyone. Women (and other underrepresented groups) tend to be disproportionately negatively affected by general climate issues within departments. For instance, graduate student salaries effect everyone, and having higher salaries helps with recruitment and retention for both genders. However, we found at Berkeley -- a public school that tends to pay graduate students less than our private school competitors -- that admitted female graduate students were disproportionately more likely to reject our offer based on salary than male students. Perhaps this is because women are more likely to anticipate having a family while in graduate school, and are more concerned about finances than their male counterparts? I don't actually know the reason. All I know is that increasing salaries disproportionately increases the acceptance rate of women graduate students. So even if you are a person who doesn't think you are affected by the "climate for women" and that these site visits are of no benefit or interest to you, that simply isn't true. Most likely the outcomes of the site visit will be a better department for everyone.
