If you want to know why there are so few women in tech, I suggest reading this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic http://www.sm

If you want to know why there are so few women in tech, I suggest reading this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883#comic The pressure doesn't come from within the industry, nor is it aimed at adults who have already expressed an interest. It comes from society as a whole, and it's aimed at children. At first, it comes from parents and teachers. Later on, it comes from their peers. By the time a girl graduates high school and starts figuring out what she wants in life, she's already biased against tech. Attempts at recruitment aren't going to significantly affect the gender ratio if they're aimed at college students or college graduates. It's already too late. Politically-biased hackathons and hiring policies will never have any real effect, except maybe to breed resentment on every side of the issue. Hey, I'm going to share some personal experience. I'm MtF transgender, and I began my transition at 28. It's pretty well known, at least in the trans community, that MtFs are overrepresented in tech, and that overrepresentation increases proportionally with the age of transition (though the age thing is becoming less relevant as the average age of transitioning is dropping, and the sharp contrast between "older transitioners" and "younger transitioners" is starting to blur). On the other hand, the ratio of MtFs to FtMs in the tech industry is about the same as the ratio of cis men to cis women (and possibly even more dramatic). The only possible answer is that people are encouraged/discouraged from tech during childhood, well before transition. It's also accelerated by how the tech community tends to be open and accepting of people who don't fit in socially. Most trans people -- MtF and FtM -- tend to associate with groups of misfits and outcasts even well before transition. For MtFs, that includes tech geeks, and for FtMs, that includes various fandoms. Compare the MtF dominance on reddit vs. the FtM dominance on tumblr: reddit was aimed at techies, and tumblr was aimed at fandoms.