What I find interesting is that "tech jargon" is listed as the number one reason these women feared getting involved in the technical side of there businesses. It is not as though men are born knowing this jargon; they spend both work and free time learning it as a part of their interests.
I know this is an old question, but how are we raising our young women to shy away from these things? Why is it acceptable to let young girls get away with not having to learn the small bits of technical language that will help them develop an interest and feel confidence with these subjects at a young age?
Why? Because misogyny is a tool that can be wielded in many directions. And it gets wielded to defend privilege and power. Once a field is defined as powerful, part of an elite, girls often are driven out of it as that field or interest is redefined to be a male thing. Boys, and girls too, ostracize and mock girls who are "into computers" because they are going outside a gender norm. If you think this doesn't still happen, hang out with some kids in a computer lab.
Your world model doesn't fit the fact that women have been gaining in every elite profession I can think of over the last 50 years. Take the example of the gender breakdown of law and medicine students:
On average I will make more money than any other 4 year degree at my school (According to our schools alum association).
I am part of a profession that has created a significant amount of recent world wide change, like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and almost every innovation on or related to the web since it's beginning.
There is a different between programmers (Like the ones Microsoft hires), and people who can program (Like the ones a small website will hire). A programmer knows more than just programming, he knows data structures, algorithms, programming language theory, how operating systems work, and a lot more, because it makes him better at his job.
If that isn't elite I don't know what is. (Lawyers and doctors can change the world, or they can practice their craft on everyday matters, and there is a wide variance between full on doctor and nurse/physician/ect., it is the same with programmers [We just haven't labeled the different tiers yet])
Programmers have much lower social status than the Professions. Programming has poor job security, entails long hours if you want to make decent money, and often requires you to work with socially inept peers.
The higher status that programming gets, the more women I expect to enter the field. Not less.
This, most definitely this. It wasn't until I went to university until I noticed it (And a very feminist [In the fact it has a large women's studies program] university at that, considering it was originally an all girls school).
Our major's lab probably isn't as bad as some, but there are still plenty of times that I could see a woman not feeling welcome in that room. I try to call them out on it, with the help of some other people, but it's only a marginal thing.
We also got some grant money to teach a general intro to CS class (marketed to freshmen, with a word choice aimed at females) that was very successful (and covered topics from basic programming, to algorithms and data structures, and touching on a lot of fields like cryptography, AI, graphics, ect.) 2 quarters after that class and our ratio of female majors has gone from 1:9 to 1:7. (Which may also be other factors)
But at least our majors lab has stopped singling out women for their gender...
You are confused if you think it is just girls who are ostracized for being "into computers". I'd agree that it may be worse for girls, but I would explain that being due to girls having a much larger propensity to emotional hurt one another than boys.
I know this is an old question, but how are we raising our young women to shy away from these things? Why is it acceptable to let young girls get away with not having to learn the small bits of technical language that will help them develop an interest and feel confidence with these subjects at a young age?