I am or have been an active member of several computer science/programming related communities. Academics, web, MUDs, ASR/BOFH, Perl to name a few. In all, there are more men than women. Relatively though there seem to be far less women in the Perl community than there are in any of the others, For any female Perl programmer I know, I know 3 or 4 female C programmers. But I know far more Perl programmers than C programmers. I don't know that many Java programmers, but even in the limited people I know that program Java, the men/women ratio isn't so lopsides as with Perl.

I know the arguments why there are less women in computer related fields than there are men, and I've no reason to not believe them. They however don't explain the very high men/women ratio in the Perl world. If I remember the number of attendees of this years YAPC::NA right, only 6% of the participants was female. The other day I came across a conference picture of a conference I went to a few years ago. (Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures). Also in Montreal, also organized at McGill. Far less men per woman there.

It doesn't bother me there are more men than women in computer related fields. It does bother me what is showing in the Perl world. Either they are hiding, or just not here. And that must have a cause. We must be doing something wrong.

-- Abigail

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