A woman - comp programmer??!!

At the company I work for, the VP of IT is a woman. The staff is split about 50/50 male/female. I'm not sure where you are, but in Toronto at least, they're not likely looking for a male or female - they're looking for the best candidate.

I worked as a programmer back in 1978, and I wasn't a rarity then.

My boss is a woman. She used to code.

I hired a female programmer (though things did not work out and my boss fired her).

Before hiring her one of our prime candidates was female as well.

There are far fewer female coders in the marketplace but I haven't experienced any predisposition towards hiring male coders.

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I have been managing programmers for many years now, and have been almost exclusively male. I get much fewer women candidates for starters. The ones I have had in the most case a re fresh out of uni. which is ok, but (any uni grad.) has a much larger unknown for our company, than say someone who had been working for a few years and came away with recommendations.

If you are confident your skill is deserving of working in a team of hopefully talented engineers. They will recognize this and it will be the single determining factor for employment.

If you look sexy, don't dress up . Nothing makes an employer more afraid than the idea of his staff spending all day talking about that hot chick who cost so much productivity to him.

In my opinion which after 20 years and having worked with some of the biggest companies in the world. Women in Engineering do find themselves often in positions of ownership, authority , decision making and yes programming. Failure is more often because the woman , for lack of a better word "whimps out", not because of discrimination.