No, the teams weren't trying to exclude women. Not at all. They were representative of the company and the entire industry. There are very few women in tech.
So then the question is why are very few women in tech? If you really dive into this, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: The fact that so few women are in tech makes the whole scene into sort of a frat house, which is often not a welcoming or kind environment to women, so women avoid it. A feedback loop. And one way you can try to combat that is by encouraging entry into the field. Et voilà: "Girls who code".
I just realized that so many people always repeat that there aren’t many women in “tech.” But it’s really more like not many women in programming. In my experience, the majority of PMs, designer/artists, and tech writers, and about half of QA, have been women. Therefore only the programming team felt like a boys club, never the larger org or the company. The only place this wasn’t true was one tiny startup I worked at long ago.
> I have had several jobs in tech. None of those work environments resembled a frat house. Maybe a few startups resemble a frat house, but is it really indicative of the industry as a whole?
Are the jobs you've worked at indicative of the industry as a whole?
So then the question is why are very few women in tech? If you really dive into this, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: The fact that so few women are in tech makes the whole scene into sort of a frat house, which is often not a welcoming or kind environment to women, so women avoid it. A feedback loop. And one way you can try to combat that is by encouraging entry into the field. Et voilà: "Girls who code".