It's hard to know what's right on this stuff. For every woman like Maria, there's another woman saying that exclusive events helped her get over her fears and

It's hard to know what's right on this stuff. For every woman like Maria, there's another woman saying that exclusive events helped her get over her fears and join in. There are women who celebrated their geeky side and then were scared off by men who, for whatever reason, couldn't manage to treat her like one of the boys. Some areas of tech have reached that terrible threshold where women aren't just a minority, they're ultra-rare. This makes the problem worse as they become a black hole for all the attention, both positive and negative (and that terrible combination of both where a million lonely young men chase the one woman who is Like Them). Even if you subscribe to the idea that the apparent disinterest of women in the field is not a real problem, you can't deny that it's bad when they start facing the effects of being a "fringe group".