A lot of preferences don&#x27;t differ; no one likes to be discriminated against, harassed, intimidated, made to feel stupid, etc.<p>Yet we know from data and endless personal stories that many women start out performing well and enjoying math and science in school, but then <i>leave</i> computing fields for cultural reasons--they feel uncomfortable or like there is a hard glass ceiling.<p>That is the problem--not the raw participation numbers, but the reasons behind the numbers.<p>If there was some natural preference of women away from computing, then the percentage of women in programming would be relatively fixed over time. What the data shows is that women have left computing fields in dramatic number over the last 30 years. Every study into why has shown that, to some extent, they have been driven out.