You can't walk five feet in the San Francisco Bay Area without bumping into a hackathon. They come in all shapes and sizes: There's Hack//Meat for the sustainable agriculture enthusiasts, the Highground Hackathon for programmers with an interest in mental health, and even the FWD.us hackathon for undocumented immigrants (who will code alongside FWD.us mastermind Mark Zuckerberg).
But at almost every hackathon, women are under-represented. It's just one symptom of a seemingly intractable issue: Women still make up the minority of workers in science, technology, and engineering fields.