nuaccnt

This is the discourse equivalent of going to a party, pulling your pants down in the living room and taking a shit on the floor.

Resentment won't help your cause, whatever it is.

It would be, if it was provably or probably true. I don't think it is. But I wasn't (and I'm not) going to spend an hour arguing the point.

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order

I'd say what for-profit companies do is the best indicator we have of the value of gender balance vs. just-making-something-people-want [to buy]--there's an imbalance in those too. Apple, for example, has an all male executive team. Microsoft has one woman (hr). Google has a few women (pr, hr/lobbying and marketing).

http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/

http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/slt.aspx

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development...

I expect an objection that assumes for-profit businesses don't act rationally to maximize profit, I won't pursue that.

If you want the average consumer to weigh in, fine. Look at download/purchase statistics, canvass users or do focus groups. If you want qualified, passionate and experienced programmers you're out of luck, those are mostly men. An overrepresentation (compared to the total number of candidates that would be good enough, of course some of them are women) it is bound to cost you something. Is having 50% (or whatever) women in open source related activity more important to you than having the best possible open source software?

Probably not. (Except as an unusual coincidence.)

Picture from a python conference:

http://www.efytimes.com/admin/useradmin/photo/Pycon-UK.jpg

As in all the other pictures that appears from a google search it's >90% men. It's perfectly understandable that review panels will have >90% men on average, if they select for (presumably equally distributed among programmers) qualifications, passion and interest.

Yes! / to crush the tyranny / let's find ourself a new Robespierre / a Lenin / a Mao / I mean / what could possibly go wrong?

"Sometimes you just came out of a screaming fight with your S.O. and dealing with a misogynist on top of that hurt just makes you want to crawl into a hole and die."

That's kinda overwrought. Personally I'm very happy people never assume I play video games (I'm a guy, and they're right, I don't).

There's women are more-stupid/less–competent than men sexism and there's women are less likely to have spent time attaining a useless (and kinda dorky) skill at first person shooters non-sexism.