Over the years my coder colleagues have been about 95% male and 5% female. Of them, I rate about 80% of the males as producers of quality code, and about 95% of the females as such. That's just my experience and my subjective scores.
The minimum number of colleagues you could have had to arrive at those ratios is 400. Assuming you've had 400 colleagues, we can break down your ratios into:
- 380 men
- 19 women producing good code
- 1 woman producing bad code
I think the error bars on that one woman would be quite large, too large to draw any conclusions.
Now if I guessed wrong and you've actually had not 400, but tens of thousands of colleagues who you've been secretly tracking and ranking in your spare time, maybe you'd have enough data to draw a conclusion.
Setting aside the questionable methodology, I expect a lot of gigs are far more accepting of mediocrity from a man than a woman, so women doing software development are much more likely to self-select out if they're not up for it— whether in actuality or due to imposter syndrome.
In any case, I would generally agree with your take but express it a bit differently— the group of programmers who really blow me away with their ingenuity and commitment to excellence has significantly more women in it than the larger population ratio suggests should be expected.
