Having highlighted Robert Max Jackson’s Destined for Equality, you might find Michael Arrington’s post on the relative death of women among technology entrepreneurs worth reading:

I could, like others (see all the links in that Fred Wilson post too), write pandering but meaningless posts agonizing over the problem and suggesting creative ways that we (men) could do more to help women. I could point out that the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman, as are two of our four senior editors (I’m one of the four). And how we seek out women focused events and startups and cover them to death.
But I’m not going to do that. Instead I’m going to tell it like it is. And what it is is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them.
That WSJ article also criticizes Y Combinator for having just 14 female founders out of their 208 startups to date. But I know that Y Combinator wants – really, really wants – female founders and that there just aren’t very many of them. I know this because Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston has told me how excited they are to get applications from women, and that they want to do everything they can to get more female applicants. What they probably won’t admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants.
The problem isn’t that Silicon Valley is keeping women down, or not doing enough to encourage female entrepreneurs. The opposite is true. No, the problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs.

Rest assured, Arrington has invited withering replies from critics. He went on to cite an email from Cyan Banister, founder of Zivity, for a theory as to what’s going on:

There’s a fascinating company, Zivity, it’s a venture-funded, adult photography community — yes, they put up pictures of naked women online — it was co-founded and is run by a woman, Cyan Banister. She wrote me in response to a post about women who are entrepreneurs, saying, basically, though these are not her exact words, women [stink] as entrepreneurs a lot of the time because they are nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature. She also said when men roll the dice and take risks, that society doesn’t punish them at all, and it’s in their nature to take stupid risks.

I imagine that appetites for risk are part of the issue. And as Elizabeth Stark, a leading free culture activist and a founder of the Open Video Alliance, has argued, mentors matter:

When I was 16, I took a Computer Science summer course at Columbia University. I was the only girl in the class, and the instructor was a male graduate student. My recollection of the class was trying to keep up with the geeks, but always feeling slightly behind as not “leet” enough. I was the odd one out.
I went on to pursue technology, but not in the Computer Science sense of the word. There was a point at which I was deciding whether to study CS as an undergrad, and yet again, there I was. Paired with an old male CS professor as an advisor, and the only woman in a sea of geeky males. I chose to study social science instead.
In retrospect, I wish that I had chosen differently, or at least given it more of a chance. But back then, in light of my serious interest in technology, I had decided that I would rather pursue the impact of technology on society than pursue the building of it via Computer Science. Had I had a mentor that encouraged me to pursue Computer Science, I likely could have been convinced otherwise.

My guess is that this is an important part of the story.