Thank you for saying this.
As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners; I saw them as programmers first. I never lacked for role models and heroes because it never occurred to me to ask that they be women. I never had any requirements beyond 'great hacker'.
What I did find frustrating was the obsequious encouragement to stay. Extra scholarships I qualified for. My pick of lab partners. Professional societies just for women. The expectation that enrolling or hiring me would make some bean counter somewhere very happy.
It's frustrating because it leaves me wondering if I'm held to a lower standard. Would my work actually stand out if I weren't a woman? When people tell me I've done a good job, are they silently adding, ". . . for a girl" ? Am I going to get upvotes on this comment just for being a woman, and not necessarily for being insightful?
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of people trying to artificially import women into the field is that sometimes they succeed. There were always women who were there because they got extra attention and extra help. Women who wouldn't shut up about what it was like to be a developer and -- holy crap -- a woman! At the same time! It was, like, worth running a whole blog about!
The more women like that there were running around, the harder I felt I had to work to differentiate myself from them. I don't want to be "second rate, but that's okay because thank God somebody got a woman to stick around." I don't want to be, "wow, that's awesome work and--HEY IT'S A WOMAN, THIS IS FRONT PAGE MATERIAL!" I want to do first rate work and be criticized and compete and fight obscurity right along with everyone else.
There aren't many women in tech. And there are even fewer of them in the really upper echelons. Then again, that's true in general. Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. It's not a justification for hamstringing the women who are the exceptions--and no one throughout history has ever said it is. But treating it like a problem just makes problems for people like me.
Seriously, just let people do what they want to do and be who they want to be and stop worrying about why they choose what they choose.