1. I thought gender-based discrimination was illegal. How is Leap not illegal?
2. One of the main objections of "gentleman's clubs" was that their (male) members had access to important networking contacts, putting women in unequal foot in an unfair way when it came to businesses. Wouldn't Leap be unfair in the same way?
This assumption completely disregards the measurable advantage men have in the tech community. If you have identical programs, one for a historically disenfranchised group, and one for the group that's been in power for decades, only one of those programs is shitty.
edit: "Advantage" was a poor choice of words, but since it's been quoted in replies I'll leave it. I meant something more like "given the gender disparities in the tech community."
What is that advantage and how is it measured ?
Why is this?
There are only two possible causes that I can see - genetic, or cultural. The genetic argument is basically that men are, by nature, better at being programmers and leaders than women - that women are inferior. The cultural argument is that there is a social advantage to being male (and a social disadvantage to being female) - that, all else being equal, things tend to default in favor of men.
Personally, I reject the genetic explanation. Most people do. If you also reject it, then you're stuck with the cultural explanation, or finding something I haven't come up with.
There are other hypotheses as well that have nothing to do with social advantages--maybe biology or culture has women preferring to elect into other career fields? We also know that (for whatever reason) women prefer flexible careers that let them spend time with kids, and that women are more likely than men to take time off to start a family and that they take more time off than men to start the family. Perhaps men and women are equal in their desire to spend time with family, but society expects men to sacrifice time with family to provide for the family? In this case, the disparity is the result of a social disadvantage to being male.
These are just a few hypotheses that I could come up with in a few moments. Some of these I think are probable and others improbable, but the point is that we have more hypotheses besides misogyny and patriarchy. We shouldn't feel the need to buy into the patriarchy explanation simply to avoid the misogyny explanation (especially because the people who favor the patriarchy explanation also tend to propose some scary reforms, like restricting due process rights for one gender).
You can cut this cake a different way, too... race. White people are overrepresented (or non-whites are underrepresented) in IT, and in high-status jobs. And the male/female representation ratios are different, as well.
Consider historic example, as well. Right now, women are significantly underrepresented as CEOs and senators. But a century ago, there were no women CEOs or senators. Are women less genetically inclined to their "proper" path as homemakers now than they were a century ago?
At a certain point, I start cutting the cake with Occam's Razor.