maybe it's because of percieved job security (Score 1)

maybe women do write more readable code, but that might be only because they are more relaxed in their environment. put a female coder in a team full of males and at least subconsciously they are gonna try and keep her around. she doesn't feel the need to prove herself because she is alreadya female programmer, she's miles ahead of other women in the field already. men are more likely to feel that they should need to write impressive code so they can keep their jobs. as a manager if you had to lay someone off, who would it be? if you fire the women you risk a lawsuit if you fire the guy who writes tricky code you lose productivity as everyone else tries to translate his stuff and you run the risk of losing a truly competitive and creative genius (though he may just be an ass-hat that writes badly documented code), or would you lay-off the guy who writes simple text-book code and makes it well documented so anyone else on your team can maintain his code with minimal loss in productivity. not the above question is different from a manager trying to hire someone, it is wiser to hire the guy who writes good code over the guy who writes unreadable code.