I don't disagree, but tech isn't the only one that wrings its hands about gender disparity... lack of male teachers being an obvious one (although the pedo hyst

I don't disagree, but tech isn't the only one that wrings its hands about gender disparity... lack of male teachers being an obvious one (although the pedo hysteria basically drove away any of them in elementary level). It's hard not to feel that tech is missing out on something by not having more women, we just don't know what we're missing. I would bet money if more women were in games, we'd have had the social game revolution a good 3 years earlier at least. As someone else mentioned, working with women creates a more pleasant and balanced place. Sometimes it's nice to hear about how the new baby is doing, or have someone to gossip with. Interactions you don't tend to get with men. I bet that helps with creativity too. What I largely disagree with is how we go react to it: very large doses of affirmative action at both the industry and college level. Not only does it just feel like we're throwing money at women who would have done it anyway, it's a rather discriminatory set of policies on top. The message is that females are the weaker tech sex, which in turn breeds things like imposter syndrome. However, I won't pretend that the locker room antics that is college Computer Science courses isn't intimidating. The problem is lower down. IIRC, there's research that says girls of 12-13 entertain the idea of going into science or engineering, but something happens in middle school age where that interest gets beaten out of them, and by high school it's all over. You've lost them. We give grants and jobs to those that had the resolve to go through it, but have nothing to say to those 14 year old girls that are wondering why they thought they'd make iOS apps at all. That's who we should be targeting.