I think the reason why there are few female programmers is due to ideas thought to be 'true' by society. Much of the US still has problems dealing with girls having 'real' jobs(anything other than housewife or secretary). When most of our society feels a certain way, they influence behaviour such that people act that way. This explains the 'Alpha Geek' thought that most geeks are males with huge egos, this probably isn't a natural(genetic) behaviour trait, but caused by people thinking that's how they should behave.

Now I'm friends with many female geeks(not of the programming type), and they exhibit many traits that your average programmer might have. These include the ability to 'superfocus', the ability to stay up all hours working on a project(including the large amounts of caffine), and the ability to find humor in technical jokes.

Hmmm.... sounds like many programmers that I know, but are they? No, most of my female geek friends are film geeks. They obsess over the latest indie film, will stay up all night trying to get the perfect shot , will discuss to minute detail the technical details of a film while watching it in the theater, and obsess over hardware. They tell jokes that involve cameras, sound recorders, and developing. Transfer their knowledge of film to computers and what would you get? You'd get your average *NIX geek.

So why don't girls like this get into programmin and computers? Because there is "some programmer boys' club." This all relates to my statement above about the 'Alpha Geek' and davorg's comment about misogynists. Many people get into programming when they discover 'Open Source' type programs, or they get into it in college.

College comp sci programs have been more popular in recent years because a comp sci can mean a high paying job(not always), so the 'jock' "I want money, but I hate computers" turnout has been higher. These are the same people who feel that certain activites are "guy's" activities, and certain activities are "girl's" activities, and that they should stay seperate. Programming falls under the former catagory as it is something that they can be macho about, therefore they attempt to push girls away from the field.

Now we reach the "Alpha Geek", the one who fights holy wars about editors( vi/emacs/pico), GUI's(KDE or GNOME), and licenses(BSD/GPL/LGPL/Closed Source). Now imagine Mr. 1337 linux geek, imagine him being ignored by girls all his life(due to his hobbies including arguing about text editors), now imagine him accepting the fact that girls can program too... Can't see it? Neither can I. Now the above was an extreme case, but many programmers feel that they have to program better than everyone else. It doesn't matter that they write good programs, but that they write better programs, this leads to resentment towards their competition, flame wars and the like ensue. Take a fairly new female programmer getting flamed from all sides about all issues, including being flamed about being female, it takes a special type of person to take that and still program.

Now I know that these are all generalizations and probably somewhat on the extreme end as examples go, but they do happen, and they are the ones I have seen first hand. I encourage people to prove me wrong, or show me things that I have interpreted wrong, but as I see it, these things won't change in the near future, and will mean a low number of female programers.

Also, it may seem like my train of thought was derailed several times, this is due to, while in the middle of writing this, an emergancy at work. Don't you just love those?

--xPhase