On Software Development and Gender

I've been a professional programmer for 3 years now and I can share my experience as a 30-yo female. I started studying computer science in 1998 (I was 23) and in my program there were only a few other females. As the classes got harder, the number of women decreased as well. In 2001, I transferred to the Univ of Wash and was surprised to find that females made up at least 25% of the program. The difference in this group of women is we were all considered returning adults (I was 26 at the time.) This may make a difference. When I was 18, i know there is no way in hell I could have or would have been interested in going into the computer science field. I just didn't have the desire or the discipline. <br><br> I graduated cum laude (i can't help but laugh whenever i say that) and soon got a job developing in php and perl. I worked with 1 other developer there who was a male. He was a coupld of years younger than me so he didn't think anything about working with a female. About 6 months later I was offered a .NET job as a gvmt contractor. This was a completely different scenario. I was working in an IT shop that's leadership was dominated by women, but most of the peons (me) were men. <br><br> My first partner was a 55-yo male who was a classic VB6 programmer. My experience with .net was limited to school, but I had done a lot of Java programming, so I was confident I could transition easily enough. I definitely was under the microscope for a time. The lead developer didn't have any project management experience so I kind of stepped in and took over certain aspects of the development. There wasn't any kind of check-in system, there were no milestones, no docmentation, etc. The lack of organization was incredible. I know my older partner was looking at me like.. who the hell does she think she is. I was the first female programmer he had worked with and the programming and management came easier to me than it did to him. To his credit, he was a kick-ass programmer. He was very methodical in his programming and could write some serious algorithims. Anyway, I think being a female, as well as the youngest member of the team, I wasn't just blankly accepted. I had to prove myself and earn my place. <br><br> Overall that was a good experience. I've only had one semi-negative experience. When I graduated from college I couldn't find a job right away so I started teaching myself php and doing websites for small businesses. I created a CMS for a business and upon project completion, I had the customer tell me how surprised he was at the job I did. At this point I had gotten to know him pretty well so I asked him why he would be surprised. He said it was hard for him to grasp how an attractive woman could really be a good programmer. That was definitely a strange compliment, but it does illustrate the bias. Okay, I think I've gone completely on a tanget now, so I'll stop before I start to confuse myself. Wait.. too late :)