My answers as a female engineer: 1) I think it's a significant contributor. I remember my first programming class at college, there were a couple of hundred pe

My answers as a female engineer: 1) I think it's a significant contributor. I remember my first programming class at college, there were a couple of hundred people in there, and maybe half a dozen women, I felt very out of place, and had I not been so stubborn I think I would have quit. 2) No, definitely not, I have some great male co-workers. I doubt that they were hired by their gender though, at least not explicitly or on purpose - I believe there was probably some unconscious bias going on, but this is not their fault and they still passed the technical interviews as I did. 3) I understand what she means (see my first answer) - I think it has to do with feeling out of place, like imagine you go to a party and everyone is dressed in fancy white suits, but you come in and you're dressed in a super colorful t-shirt and no pants (not because you wanted to, but because you thought you were supposed to dress that way) - you stand out and don't feel like you belong. It's like that.