Yes in general I'm against positive discrimination, I do not believe the fairer sex is suitably disadvantaged in order to make this sort of thing necessary.

Where is the mentoring program for young men? Why do women deserve/require better/different treatment ?

While there certainly is a very low number of females in IT, its not that rare, I've worked with females in various roles from Business Analyst, Project Manager, DBA, Programmer, Web Developer, Tester, IT support.

On the technical side I'd have to say females are outnumbered 10:1 (maybe as high as 50:1 for programmers), but in the management and customer facing roles numbers tend to be higher.

I'd also mention that on an anecdotal note maybe 50% of my managers have been female, and generally they were not as good as their male counterparts, instead of possibly bringing the many positive attributes that we tend to associate predominately with women, many of them had a ruthless streak and often they were less technically able.

Personally I expect females are simply not as interested in inanimate objects as men in general (well I guess they do buy shoes..), they are simply not prepared to stare at a screen for the hours required in order to master the subject matter with relatively little assistance.

Id be interested to find out what women think on the issue of why there are not more women in technical roles, after all girls generally do better at maths so it does seem strange.

If you think its just a role model thing, well personally I'd rather have my role models be the best in their field than discount them because they are the wrong sex, but I guess subconsciously at a younger age being able to readily identify with a role model might be important.

We could argue if there should be more mentoring and tuition, and certainly I think there should be at all levels (that's why I joined certforums) however this is a separate issue to positive discrimination schemes.