Personally, I do not feel that 'umbrella initiatives' like this would have helped me make my first pull req in a project unless the site plans to offer concrete

Personally, I do not feel that 'umbrella initiatives' like this would have helped me make my first pull req in a project unless the site plans to offer concrete pairing and mentoring (ie someone on IRC/chat answering questions about how to fork a repo or make a pull req). And yes,this is just my personal experience and most likely varies from person to person. If this intiative helps women who would not have otherwise contributed to OSS, then more power to it! Some great outreach efforts IMHO are: (1) Concrete instructions on how to use version control (2) Encouraging open source communities to produce helpful and newbie friendly 'Contributors' pages (3) Teaching new contributors how to navigate a potentially complex and lengthy codebase (4) Not being 'RTFM' when a newbie is struggling with a pull req (5) Having beginner friendly open source sprints at conferences. These will help contributors of all genders get started.