[gambiting]

While I disagree with the wording of OPs comment, I think it's easy to see that the problem here is that there is not enough women programmers - but I think we can both see how this in turn leads to difficulty in finding good ones?

For example - my MSc course in computer science had 30 people total, and out of them 3 were women. Of course, it's outrageous that only 10% of the students in that course were women, but that's a deeper problem that needs to be addressed far earlier than MSc level.

However, put yourself in shoes of a company recruiting programmers - you need to hire 1-2 programmers out of those 30 graduates. If you say that you only want to look at exam results and nothing else(completely blind choice) what is the chance that they will end up with a woman programmer? Very low, but it's not because women are any less skilled - it's just that there's fewer of them.

That's the problem that needs to be addressed first.

(For the sake of argument, I would say that if we looked for some predominantly female roles, like a nanny, the same would apply - "you just can't find a good male nanny" seems true, but it's not because men are any worse at it, it's just that there's so few of them in this profession)

[cbanek]

Not only finding, but retaining. When there are very few women, organizations get... interesting. If women are pushed out of those organizations before there's a critical mass to have change happen, then hiring a few women here or there doesn't really help. If anything it just makes the women crazy.

The more balanced your team is, the more balanced your team culture is, and therefore the better chance you will have of retaining good people and the good balance.