[chriszf]

I don't think having a school for women necessarily gives an unfair advantage. I'm not even sure it's an 'advantage' at all in a male-dominated discipline, especially given the degree to which engineering is male-dominated.

You're right that girls don't think tech is cool. I've heard this anecdotally from high school teachers and friends running Girls in Tech programs. I'm not sure I know how to tackle that specifically.

One problem might be the phenomenon that occurs when you walk into a room full of people who look nothing like you. As a minority (I know I look Chinese, but I'm a Samoan-born Filipino), I feel this a little bit all the time. But when I walked into a local Women Who Code event to meet someone, it was downright alarming. After experiencing that, I can't blame women for not wanting to participate in tech at all.

Regarding your last statement, I want to point out that I've never worked with a woman who was a bad engineer, and seemingly, neither has anyone else. Conspicuously absent are the unremarkable, or even poorly performing female engineers, while their male counterparts are everywhere. One expects a more normal distribution, and I think this indicates some systemic problem, but it's not one I know how to solve without more data. Right now, I think the best we can do is address the symptom and add more women into the tech pool directly.