I feel like this problem was easier to solve in other industries. For instance for doctors or lawyers there was a long line of women who wanted to be doctors and lawyers but couldn't because of institutional barriers.
All we had to do was remove the barriers.
Software is harder. I see three places we are losing women. First is women who never even consider the field, the second is women who drop out of car in college, and the third is women who switch fields from cs.
We're losing the most women in the first step in the pipeline and I've tried to convince so many of my girl friends to join software because I work half as much and make twice as much as them. But despite this they all had absolutely no interest in joining. They mostly had two fears. One was they wouldn't be good at it, but overwhelmingly the fear was they wouldn't like it.
The second was women who switch in college. I only know 2 women who started off cs and switched. One switched because she didn't like it. The other switched because she felt intimidated because she was put in a class with people like myself who had years of coding experience in a classroom, summer camps, and as a hobby before our first class in CS.
For the third leak in the pipeline all the women I know who left, left because they didn't enjoy the work. Some because they wanted to feel more connected to their work and people, moving from software to roles like therapist and teacher.
I think it's incredibly important we try to get women into tech. Women those women who would enjoy it lives would be better, consumers would enjoy better software, and our industry would be healthier.
But I think to do that it's important we use identify the right root causes.
I one of which is treating devs like rockstars aka children with specialized skills that need to be managed instead of professionals similar to engineers.
But I don't think sexism plays a big part. It exists,and it should be eliminated, every female dev I've talked to has experienced it. But none of them mentioned it as a reason they were thinking of leaving software.(at the professional level, I think it's more impactful at the college level where you have a bunch of kids who have no idea how to talk to women, and peer groups are more influential). But all my friends who are doctors and lawyers also experienced sexism, and in most cases far worse than the devs.
