I think I have a different perspective on this topic than most here. My wife has founded multiple companies. I also have two daughters (and a son). One of which is very interested in programming. I'm older, but back in college and early professional life I worked with a number of women. Myself and my colleagues treat them the same as the rest of the team. There certainly weren't a lot of women, but we didn't treat them any different.
But the current generation of young techies seem to be outright hostile towards women. All you have to do is read some of the comments on HN whenever a topic in this area arises. From some of the things I read in comments I seriously give pause on whether I should push my daughter in programming/tech. Some women can tolerate this hostility better than others, but I don't see it going away anytime soon. I really think the problem is with the attitude of the modern young techy towards females. I don't know where it comes from or how to fix it. But it worries me.
>But the current generation of young techies seem to be outright hostile towards women.
To the extent that this is true, I think it could be backlash in response to pushing for more women in tech.
My youngest brother's high school has a girls only programming club, and a girls only robotics team (with no male equivalents). There was also a program where kids from his engineering class got selected for a summer electrical engineering program, with preferential selection for girls. He really wanted to do it and he definitely had the grades and ability, but all 3 kids who were selected were girls (who had lower GPAs and lower scores in the engineering class.)
He lives in a pretty rural area, so there aren't really a lot of options for him to get involved in something like a robotics team outside of school. I would have probably been upset if something I was really interested in was off limits because of my gender, and I can't really say how something like this would have affected me when when I was 14.
If it makes you feel any better, it seems unlikely to me that attitudes have changed for the worse. I think there were always people who thought these things, and what's changed is that the anonymity of online commenting makes it easier for them to say them.
But the current generation of young techies seem to be outright hostile towards women. All you have to do is read some of the comments on HN whenever a topic in this area arises. From some of the things I read in comments I seriously give pause on whether I should push my daughter in programming/tech. Some women can tolerate this hostility better than others, but I don't see it going away anytime soon. I really think the problem is with the attitude of the modern young techy towards females. I don't know where it comes from or how to fix it. But it worries me.