[akeefer]

There's no single reason why there are fewer women than men in programming, so asking if sexism is "the real reason" is asking the wrong question. Instead, you should ask, "is it a real reason" why there are fewer women in programming?

I think that the answer there is probably yes, and I think that if you talk to enough female engineers, they'll tell you that the sexism and insensitivity is a turnoff to them. It obviously doesn't push every woman out of the field, but it's pretty hard to imagine that it doesn't discourage at least some women from pursuing a career in software.

Getting to 50/50 gender equality isn't the goal; the goal is to not have women discouraged from doing a job that they'd want to do because of the (often unconscious) sexism of their potential coworkers. If we did that and the field was still 70% male, then okay, but can anyone say we're honestly at that point yet, and that no one is turned off by this stuff?

[jdp23]

Great point. NCWIT has a good summary of the various factors leading to underrepresentation of women at http://www.ncwit.org/thefacts and the book "Unlocking the clubhouse" goes into a lot more detail.