Darren Barefoot links to an article by Gloria JW on DevChix entitled “Let?s All Evolve Past This: The Barriers Women Face in Tech Communities“.
If the title wasn’t obvious enough, it’s a pretty clear and interesting run-down on some of the challenges and barriers that exist for women in the IT industry and, tech communities generally.
To be totally honest, my interaction with women in IT has been very limited so far - I think I can count on one hand the number of women that were doing something relatively technical (i.e actual architectural design/code/admin/etc) that I’ve actually dealt with. The and (pretty much) all of that interaction has been over the phone (given how widely distributed the people in our company are).
The one actual face-to-face interaction I’ve had, I kinda goofed though. Not for any of the reasons Gloria writes about, more just a case of me misunderstanding*. Ohwell, I think it worked out okay in the end though.
* = Misunderstanding her interest/involvement in IT, that is - nothing else.
One interesting thing Gloria writes is that moderation policies in online forums should reject postings that are overly aggressive:
The ?You?re wrong, here?s the right answer? type of response constitutes picking a battle that most women won?t fight, or won?t even bother dealing with.
I (think) I understand where Gloria is coming from on this - but I still don’t think that saying “Sorry, you’re wrong - here’s the correct information” is necessarily bad. From the comments, I don’t think I’m alone in that either. But, perhaps that’s just the alpha-male combatative thing coming out in me 
