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I have plenty to say about the meetings I attended in the last two days, but of all these things floating around in my head, there’s one thought that’s stuck with me. And when you look at the big picture, it’s a far greater problem than either of thoes groups were attempting to solve: it affects technology, sociology, and economy, and it’s been around, unsolved, forever.

There were fifty attendees at the Web Applications and Compound Documents workshop. There were 22 attendees at the Atom community meeting.

One of the 72 people I saw at these meetings was a woman. One.

Why is this the case, almost sixty years after women helped build the first digital computer? The lazy answer is that women aren’t interested in developing new formats for Web applications or syndication. But that’s not one I would make: certainly there are women who would be willing and valuable participants in these processes. These kinds of discussion, while not always the most thrilling, do matter, and need input from everyone, everywhere. The absence of one gender is shameful, and it’s prompted me to think about what people like me can do.

I’ve been thinking about the climate around these meetings. It’s still true in many places, including MIT, that the old-boys-club attitude is alive and well. I don’t think men as a bloc are banding together consciously to perpetuate this, but perhaps it’s more of an issue of inertia, with people who studied in all- or nearly-all-male computer science departments simply thinking that girls are just weird for not liking their field.

I think I’ve had an uncommon career, in that five out of the last seven bosses I’ve had have been women. And I work with a number of intelligent women engaged in various roles at the W3C, though still a relatively small number of technicians. I think a more even balance between genders would clear out a lot of our institutionalized baggage.

It’s clear that women are, if not yet at parity, rapidly getting there in computer-related fields of study — that is, if they’re studying in India or China. In the United States, women graduates in the field are on the decline as a percentage. This is wrong. It’s bad for business and society to continue to ignore this. People in technology, of both genders, must get together and work on this inequity. It may require us to understand what social factors may be involved in causing women to avoid this career path (Harassment? Conflict? Poor communication skills? Bad hygiene?), and work on remedying it. That’s a net win for everybody.

At the very least, we may find women can be as ineloquent as men when it comes to standing at the mic. And wouldn’t that be a relief to us all?