[jlees]

I'm not sure on #2. When I was a teenager I had no idea about tech conferences, open source figureheads, and I barely noticed the gender of writers. Do boys? Mom not programming, and not having any female friends/relatives who do, seems more of an issue - and leads into #3.

I'm not arguing #2 isn't a problem, though. Sadly, I'm not in tune with how kids get role models these days to have any useful suggestions how to fix it. I was a mentor for Technovation, teaching high school girls Android development, but by that age perhaps it's too late.

I think there's also an aspect of not realising what programming is, so not thinking you can do it because it seems a lot scarier than it really is.