Men absolutely will exaggerate skills to try and win status and profit: I've caught men lying on CVs before. The difference is that when they get caught they a

Men absolutely will exaggerate skills to try and win status and profit: I've caught men lying on CVs before. The difference is that when they get caught they are swiftly dealt with. There is no social pressure to go easy on men in tech. If a man exaggerated his technical skills to the point that he was claiming to be a hacker and open source programmer but couldn't point to any programs or actual contributions of code, he would rightly be laughed at and dropped from a hiring pipeline. If he was busy making such claims to the media, journalists would investigate and expose him. The incentives not to do this mean that whilst it does happen, I feel it's much rarer. I don't remember the last time I encountered a male journalist making unsubstantiable claims to be an open source contributor.