Well, I've not been employed all that long, no-one's waved a study at me, and I don't know so many girls in my field that I can figure this out just by talking

Well, I've not been employed all that long, no-one's waved a study at me, and I don't know so many girls in my field that I can figure this out just by talking about it to other people (I'd have to talk to an equal number of boys as well, but for some reason they're a lot easier to find). I already have one (fairly minor) failure under my belt. I seem to have got away with it. I'm still in my job, still working on the same kind of stuff I was before, and no-one told me not to bother my pretty little head about that bit because I'm clearly not so good at things like that. Yes, I think everyone gets problems if they fail. But my worry is about second chances, and blocking off areas of computing for other people. Someone I know made an off-hand comment about every girl who has worked in this department has worked on the UI. I don't know if they've ever had a girl on the build team. I don't know if they've ever had a girl working on the really low-level stuff. There certainly aren't any at the moment. Is there an underlying current of 'girls are better at the touchy-feely UI stuff'? Do girls overall really tend to work better with UIs? Am I comparing teams with a high turnover with teams with a low one? Am I trying to generalise from too little data again? So, let's have a hypothetical opportunity for me to go and work on some arbitrary low-level stuff. Maybe it's to do with networking protocols. And maybe for one reason or another I'm blindingly obviously no good at it whatsoever. Will this affect my ability to go into unrelated areas with similarly few past examples of successful ladies later? Will it affect Alice (who knows not just about networking protocols, but also basic cryptography) when she is hired next week? Will she then have to work harder than Bob to persuade everyone that she is competent in that area? Maybe I should play it safe and work on something that is less challenging and that I know I can succeed at. After all, if Alice fails as well, then Eve may be looked over entirely. And that would make me feel really guilty. So the penalty for failure is higher. Of course, there's a good chance there is no bias whatsoever. And I'm fairly likely to take a few risks. But you don't need actual bias for this to have an effect. If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour, and thus under-performing ladies.