The most highly regulated businesses exist in the high population density areas -- San Francisco and surrounding counties, Los Angeles and Orange County, San Diego, and, to a lesser extent, Sacramento. The unemployment rate in SF is hovering around 5%.
Most of the women in tech that I know share at least some of these cultural preferences, but that is self-selection. The ones who share it are the ones who are comfortable staying.
It is not just women who are put off by the need for constant competition within this culture that goes on in so many programming teams or in the server room. I have a male friend with whom I have worked for years and who is a well-qualified Unix sys admin who was hounded from a job because he does not particularly enjoy video games. Oh, and he was older than the rest of the team, which also made him a pariah (they said so out loud).
Do take a minute and give the women reading this in an environment that is already exclusionary a thought. We are constantly pushed (or driven, with threats of rape or death) away from the possibility of earning a living with our skills. One is jabbed with that day in and day out. Then, in a place one thinks might just be available for one to improve one's skills and employability there is one more, big damned jab, straight in the face. A big "fuck you, bitch, you are ruining my place by wanting to participate." Now, be calm and reasoned in your response. Like yours to the people on Twitter who you see as wanting to "punish anyone who doesn't comply with their demands."
I don't think you know what a daily shit sandwich it can be for women attempting to work in tech. And the people making it a misery are regularly praised for their wit and charm. While the women who "don't comply with the demands" of the exclusionary men to get the hell out of programming and find another way to make a living are "punished."
eyeroll
First -- there is a big difference between privacy and anonymity/going off the grid.
I would agree that the ability to do the latter while participating in first world society is effectively impossible.
There is a lot that can be done, both by the individual and by governments, to improve the ability of individuals to control how information about and by themselves is used and transmitted.
Officially (but not enforced to nearly the extent it should be), the EU Data Protection Act states that information about an individual belongs to that individual and there is a basic right to a degree of anonymity. One is supposed to be informed where the data sits, whether it is correct, and how it is being used. We are all learning the extent to which that law is ignored in Europe. It is, however, a beginning and establishes the common sense idea that I own information about myself, including images of myself. The vast majority of countries world-wide have variations of this law.
The US starts from the assumption that data belongs to those who collect or aggregate it. This means that, in order to provide any privacy (in the sense of controlling data from/about oneself), individual bits of that information have to be defined and exempted from that assumption. This is how we got HIPAA (which is extremely narrow and poorly enforced), the cluster of banking privacy acts (again, poorly enforced). Until this changes, it is really difficult to control how/whether data about yourself is used, by whom, and whether it is accurate.
There is some privacy. You do not have to have your SSN tattooed on your forehead, nor do you have to give it to everyone who asks. You should protect your banking information and you don't have to tell your employer about any disability unless you want accommodation. Which is all fine in theory, but in practice, few of us take the time to learn the laws and our privacy rights and even fewer of those who want to collect this information bother to learn the rules or abide by them.
You can go off the grid, but you have to leave everything behind. And, if you really want to, you should find a place to live that uses just paper records.
"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight