Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Women in tech" events are a good example of how women exclude themselves. A typical event has the following attributes: - Men strongly discouraged or banned from participating. - Many of the attendees are "women in tech" but not "technical women", it's common to see women who describe themselves as co-founders, activists, HR staff and so on but relatively rare to find someone who actually spends all day banging out…
That's an interesting theory, but do you have any evidence that most of these events are more political in nature than actually talking about programming and technology? Your girlfriend's one or two anecdotes aren't really sufficient to make a generalization like that.
I've presented my sources. Why not go find counter-examples? I bet you'll find it's harder than you expect. But OK, I'll make my case more strongly.
Here's a simple exercise. Pick a buzzword, say blockchain, search for "women in X" and let's look at some of the top results.
https://www.womenontheblock.io/ - check out the speakers. The first is a PhD student in cryptography, not a bad start. But then there's a co-founder, another co-founder, another founder (of "Investing in Women" i.e. an activist), a lawyer, an actual software engineer! Sort of - in 2011 she was an intern, she spent two years doing support tickets and is now a PM, but hey, that's at least something. Then we're back to a lobbyist, another founder (of a foundation), another lawyer, "Chief Discovery Officer" whatever that is, lawyer, digital content lead, shareholder (?), co-founder, business development executive, CFO, lawyer, CTO of the World Bank Group whose background is actually management consulting and "thought leadership", sales, "human capital officer" etc etc.
You get the picture. I just worked down the list and of all the people listed, only two appeared to do anything actually related to writing software: a cryptography student and someone who spent a couple of years as a support engineer but then quickly moved into product management.
Notice the pre-ponderance of women calling themselves founders and co-founders. That's very common. They are not what HN readers would recognise as a startup founder. Often they've founded entities that don't do anything, or are just organising more "women in X" meetups, or in the rare case where they're making software, have partnered with men / outsourcing shops to do so.
Here's another example: https://www.blockchainbeach.com/live-2018-women-in-blockchai...
Look at the agenda. It starts with a basic intro to blockchain, ok, slightly technical but nothing you can't find on YouTube. But then we're right into a discussion of "her time in the middle east and dispelling misconceptions about women in that region" i.e. about general women's issues, not tech. Then a panel whose first listed topic is "social impact" and one of the members is a musician (at least two of the women do appear to be at least somewhat technical). Then a marketing pitch for some random alt-coin whose relevance appears to be mostly that the marketing person for NEM is a woman. Then a keynote on "diversity in blockchain" - women's issues/feminism again. Then a panel on "women empowerment and inclusion". Useful observations like "42% of all the women in the world do not have a bank account" (men's problems of course don't count). And so on.
Really, if you have never investigated these events before - don't bother. They are mostly just non-technical feminists complaining about men, engaging in outrageous sexism and generally making the whole feminist cause look bad.