Three points that seem to say that the
girls/women should do well in <i>information
technology</i>:<p>(1) Advantages.<p>As I recall from K-12, college, and more,
in several respects of <i>talent</i>,
<i>interest</i>, <i>diligence</i>, <i>psychology</i>,
<i>socialization</i>, etc., the girls/women
(<i>girls</i> here and below) are, on average,
significantly better than the boys/men
(<i>boys</i> here and below). So, the girls
have some significant advantages.<p>Of course, coding, information technology,
computing, etc. consist of "clean indoor
work, no heavy lifting".<p>With those advantages and the nature of
the work, it would appear that any girls
who want to do well in <i>coding</i>, etc. have
a good shot, often better than that of the
boys.<p>(2) Evaluation.<p>How to evaluate the girls?<p>As in the OP, is it important for the
girls to wear pretty, feminine clothes
versus <i>nerd</i> wear of worn jeans and
T-shirts?<p>No. The main issue is getting the work
done.<p>When I was a student, it seemed that the
girls got graded on their work, not their
clothes; when I was a professor giving
grades, again the only issue for a grade
was the work. Thus, it seems to me that,
in the world of work in <i>information
technology</i>, the easy, natural, obvious
approach is just to evaluate the work,
ignoring clothing, gender, etc.<p>(3) Writing.<p>In computing, we need to build on the work
of others, but to do so we need a good
description of that work. That is, we
need good documentation.<p>Thus, to me, currently the main bottleneck
to progress in information technology is
bad documentation from poor writing.
Since in school on average the girls were
better at writing than the boys, I have to
believe that girls can be quite welcome
and do well improving the quality of the
writing and, thus, help alleviate the
bottleneck.<p>If my startup works, then I will have to
hire, and I will expect a person who does
some work will also write the relevant
documentation. Here the girls should have
an advantage.