Mei said she spends time teaching JavaScript to high school girls and encouraging them to consider programming. Girls also are finding their way around MySpace, she said.

"I find it very encouraging that these days, every teenage girl that I know can make their own MySpace page," said Mei. "They don't think of it as programming."

Taking time off to have babies has affected employment opportunities for women, Mei, a mother herself, noted. "There's a lot of women [who] drop out when [they] have kids," she said.  Then, when they seek to return, "they come out and they can't even get interviews because of this gap in their resume," Mei said.

Historical issues also were noted. In the 1990s, computer science programs were set up to be difficult to weed out persons. This was because there were more applicants than available spots for developers, Mei said. "All of the women dropped out because the guys generally had been programming since they were in high school or earlier," she said. Since then, a lot of computer science programs have not made adjustments in the way things were done in the 1990s, she said.

Mei also cited a recent newspaper article about the "macho gaming culture" suppressing the number of women in programming. "I have no idea how to address it, but it seems to be an issue," she said.