My experiences at a woman's programming workshop

That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher.

>Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python.

Sounds like Dave was in the wrong class and should have been told so.

>I wondered afterwards why this extremely competent woman in her 20s would react this way after clearly mastering the material.

That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it?

Just ask the jerk to stop asking questions and making remarks. You're trying to teach a class and that involves input and interaction of all students, not just the one. As a teacher you are responsible for the learning climate in the room and you can act accordingly.

If the jerk doesn't like that, (s)he can leave.

Great comment. Someone should've told Dave to leave. This is less of a matter of teaching than of administration.

The part of the post that intrigued me was when she...

"[Looked] at her screen, she’d made significant progress towards finishing the project, but when she asked me a question she giggled and told me she had no idea what the project was about, or what to do.

Why?

I still don’t know the reason. Studies have shown that especially bright women have this reaction to difficult material and that women learning computer science do better in an single sex classroom (though those studies have critics)."

On a similar Hacker News post, "In Math You Have to Remember, In Other Subjects You Can Think About It" the author paraphrases from a book "What's Math Got To Do With It?", in which he states that a student

"... called Rebecca, was conscientious, motivated, and smart, and regularly attained A+ grades in mathematics. She was able to follow the methods her teacher demonstrated in class, and could reproduce them perfectly. But she did not understand what she was doing, and as a result she regarded herself as not good at math. When Boaler asked her why she thought that, she replied, "Because I can't remember things well and there is so much to remember." [p.164.]"

Coincidentally both subjects are female but I think it's part of an underlying theme on learning and developing critical thinking skills that is playing out across this country. And the consequences of this lack/challenge differs on how one is taught.

Yes, it has to do with the response, but I can't agree with the main point of it which is due to selection bias I think (not gender differences):

  To me, and I suspect most men, we’d see Dave’s behavior 
  as a call to arms. Dave was raising the stakes and even 
  though his behavior was clearly rude, it also demonstrated 
  that he had a mastery over the material.

If this is the core of the article's point, I don't agree with it. People such as "Dave" waste everyone's time, it doesn't really matter what gender Dave and his audience are. When I encounter a Dave, I don't see it as a pointless "call to arms", I tune out and ultimately leave. I'm not wasting my time fighting people like Dave. I don't like how the article implies this makes me less of a man. It's simply good sense in my opinion not to waste your energy on trolls.

If there are groups where everyone feels challenged and is in a fighting mood after seeing Dave in action, it's probably because everyone else already left the room or had the sense not to come to the event in the first place.