Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart and capable as they. I've heard of no (until recently) cases of misconduct, or uncomfortable work environments -- on the contrary, I've usually heard that when a woman engineer claims that she'd like something to make her environment better, her management will bend over backwards to try and accommodate. I have heard of the usual pay issues and promotion problems. But in most cases it seems to just be a matter of not asking for them.

At any rate, the lack of representation of women in software is a huge problem in the field since it cuts off effectively half of the possible work force. More importantly, software that might better reach the female audience doesn't get written, services don't get created, etc.

Now the story.

My wife is a software engineer, her last job was a technical department head at a company with about 40% female software engineers. It wasn't super high-end work, but it provided services and data worth about $30-40million/yr to some very major institutions, so it had to be rock solid.

Her immediate boss was a woman, and 3 out of 4 department heads were women. Her boss's boss was a man.

Before that she worked for a $2billion dollar large company. In her department, there were about 30% female engineers (though in another technical department there were none, go fig). (her immediate super was a woman, but later changed to a man).

Before that she worked at an e-commerce company, of the engineering staff were women, her boss was a man, but his boss was a woman.

In every case they produced great, solid work, the companies were wildly profitable, her career progressed fantastically -- and she never complained about problems with sexism. Maybe she's been lucky, she never sought out these places, but that's where she ended up. (it could be that having so many women in the first placed altered the hiring dynamics so that they would tend to hire more women later)

Late last year, at the company she worked for, they brought in a new COO and within 4 months everything changed. Women managers were promoted up and over or moved laterally into diminished positions. Men with no engineering experience were brought in as department supervisors. My wife had her department entirely eliminated and her staff placed under all new male supervisors. One woman engineer was fired because she botched a minor product management job while a male engineer was promoted to department head right after complaints of rampant racism and sexism were formally filed against him.

My wife was devastated, she tried to stick it out, but the writing was on the wall and after a few miserable, tortuous months, I convinced her to resign. It was the first time she (or I for that matter) had seen or experienced such rampant and overt sexism.

Three months after she leaves we find out from her former colleagues that the COO was fired, and that 3 out of 4 major development projects have to be scrapped (at a total loss of $7-9 million) and the company is running in the red (in a recession proof industry).

If she had stayed her problems would now be over and she might have been able to work the problem to her advantage.

But, the good side is that she's now trying to startup her own company, brushing the dust off of long dormant engineering talents, and is happier than I've ever known her to be since she's doing her own thing and writing her own rules. Her job satisfaction appears to be off the charts and I don't think I've ever seen her work so hard.