[lindseybieda]

It's up to everyone in the community to fix this. No matter what their sex or race. It's just a matter of being a more open and welcoming community.

I'm sure there are fellow female (and other minority) programmers reading the comments on this article feeling completely unwelcome in the programming community.

[shallowwater]

I'm one of those lady-types reading the comments here and getting the message loud and clear that no matter how interested I may be, or how talented I may become, I am not a welcome addition to this community.

[nsxwolf]

What led you to that conclusion? No, seriously, I want to know. Why don't you feel welcome?

[roguecoder]

This is how I've seen the global conversation go:

Women: "We feel unwelcome. It's kind of lonely." Dudes: crickets Women: "Well, fine, we can make more money elsewhere working fewer hours." leave Nerdy Girls: "Video games are for boys, except the stupid ones. All those programmers are men, and all the technical women I've seen got pushed into program management. Guess I should go be a computational biologist instead. I'm not regarded as a strange alien in those classes." Dudes: "Hey, there's a lot fewer women here. Maybe there's a problem like those women said." Other Dudes: "Nah; let's just keep doing what we're doing. They probably just want to pop out kids or something. Besides, it's not like they wanted to sleep with me anyway." The Woman Who Didn't Leave: "It's totally cool guys; I'm not a bitch like those other women! I think it's awesome being the only girl!"

This thread is part of a much bigger context. As long as the response to someone just pointing out the consequences of the sexism women have reported happening repeatedly for decades is a bunch of dudes bickering among each other about whether the problem exists or whether it is more important than nerds having trouble propositioning women for sex in bars, I'm not sure what message women are supposed to receive.

[shallowwater]

Well, the fact that people are attempting to argue that, as a lady, I am somehow 'naturally' unfit for intellectual/mathematical/logical tasks is pretty insulting. I know that you (general) are not talking about me (specifically), but it's pretty hard not to take it a little personally.

Then there is the tone of "No, there could not possibly be a problem with US" that permeates so many comments on this thread. There are very few voices that are even willing to entertain the idea that there is an aspect of this culture that is unwelcoming or hostile to women.

And finally, there are all the comments that seem to be saying that who cares why there is a strong gender imbalance in this field, they don't see a problem with the status quo, and that including more women in the field is completely unnecessary and not worth considering, much less actually doing anything about.

So yeah. Not feeling like I could ask any of these people and a question about something I'm studying or make a comment about something technical without getting either a lot of "pat pat little girl" or otherwise insulting and unhelpful reactions.

[Kathy]

How about comments like "Women getting their panties in a bunch about something as minor as that is the reason they aren't taken seriously in the workplace (to the extent they aren't, I mean)"? Not even so much the message as the way it was said.

[nsxwolf]

That's like one guy on this whole thread. Everyone else would be more than happy to see you in an interview.

We all would. We're just not seeing you gals come in. We've got quite a few female project managers and business devs at my company, but no programmers.

[Kathy]

(The other answers to the first question are better and I agree with them.)

It is possible (I don't actually know in your case) that there are other factors that make women not want to apply to your company. For example, right now (and in the US) women are more likely than men (for this argument it doesn't matter whether it is cultural or innate) to seek companies that reward people (or at least don't punish people) for wanting a balanced between work and home. A company's career website (or benefits website) can turn off potential applicants if it looks like that balance is not respected. That is particularly true in software because there are software companies that do both.