Perhaps one reason is that jobs in Computing are typically not all that attractive? My current freelance project sees me working in a room with 20 people, lined

Perhaps one reason is that jobs in Computing are typically not all that attractive? My current freelance project sees me working in a room with 20 people, lined up on long desks (not even Cubicles). After a while, it can get a bit smelly. There are 4 women and 16 men working in the room, and to be honest I wonder why the women put up with it (they are not developers, either). That kind of setup is not uncommon. I have been asked to work in windowless rooms, which I rejected. I have worked in ugly industrial areas and ugly buildings. I have worked in the basement that wasn't officially suitable for human use (only legal for storage). After 6 hours, my eyes hurt from the strain of looking at HTML and Javascript all day, trying to find tiny mistakes in the source code. But I have at least 2 more hours to go. Human interaction is minimal - yes there are meetings, but that is not the same as human interaction that for example a doctor sees. Sure, jobs at Google or Facebook might be fancy. But even at big companies (including Google) I have seen those big open plan offices. They just had more colorful toys lying around at Google. And most devs won't work for Facebook or Google. Why do I put up with it? Because I need the money to feed my family, and I can not easily switch to another profession. This is probably controversial and will give me downvotes, but most women don't need to work to feed their family - their husbands do that. So they are not forced to put up with smelly, crowded, windowless rooms for years and years on end. And women can easily switch profession, too: they can simply become mothers, which 40% choose to do (become fulltime moms, that is - more women become mothers of course). I enjoy programming for my own projects, but most dev jobs I did for money were gruesome. Note that this gruesomeness affects women and men in the same way. There are no offensive Star Wars posters or other Geeky things lining the walls. The environments just tend to be less comfy, because devs only stare into their computers anyway. The notion always seems to be that the women who shy away from tech end up leading "wasted", brainless lives as housewives. Not so. They become doctors, or journalists, or liberal arts people (and btw., housewive and spending time with your kids is not all that bad either). I understand if companies want to lure women into tech, because it gives them a greater talent pool and lower wages (because of greater supply). But it is not an issue of equality.