[ddebernardy]

For that, the first step should probably be to have more women in STEM classes so they can get recruited in these industries to begin with.

I've no idea how it currently is, but back when I was studying the ratio was something like 90% male in some curriculums. (There were exceptions, e.g. chemistry or biology, but they were rather rare.) Has this changed since?

[potatolicious]

A large part of the reason we have so few women in STEM is because of the toxic work culture that surrounds it. We also lose graduates once people decide they have better things to do than deal with sexist assholes all day.

I'm all for encouraging more women getting into STEM, but this needs to be a two-pronged approach. Without dramatic improvements to tech culture encouraging more women to study tech is mostly pointless.

FWIW, my engineering class was ~85% male. My working environments have been consistently 95%+ male. The industry is doing considerably worse than academia.

[navait]

I think it peaked at some point during the 80's and then declined. Ancedotally, I've certainly met more women who wrote cobol and the like back in the day than women working in my current career. And there are a lot more women in my CS graduate program than I've met working at web startups.