I have my MS in Software Engineering, and a CSDP from IEEE, and I've been the architect on large systems, and I've encountered other women in my field at this level.

Now, when you say you don't know any hackers, or architects that are women, honestly how many men can you name? These people are rarely widely known, as for the drop out rate in my field - lets see, outsourcing of jobs is going at gang busters speed, there is zero job security, and you have to constantly pick up new skills, and keep going to training, forever (ie as long as you are in the profession) it pays great , but not as good as say being a lawyer or doctor, and the hours are just as long as an lawyer or doctor, but - unlike those professions if you are an actual employee, you get nothing for it but to keep your jobs (ie no overtime, you salary person). You can be a consultant and get paid for the overtime, but have really zero job stability and have to travel all the time. Women tend to want a life, marriage and kids, working 60Hour+ weeks and weekends for years on end can be kind of a deal breaker. A lot of women who leave the field go back, and get a law degree in patient law, or specialize in tech..... get more money and work fewer hours, I've been considering it myself. I do love building things, but I'am on my 20 something language, and 4th platform... and at 40+ over the hill for the game. This is a burn out field that favors the young, who do not have families or a life. Which was great in my twenties, ....but now - no

The difference between sperm donations, and eggs, is the egg donation has a chance of doing perm ant harm to the donor. This is an unregulated industry with no uniform reporting requirements, so if you want to look up the number of women adversely harmed by the egg extraction process, you can't get the numbers.

Every investigation I'd seen into fertility clinics, said they lied about their success rates, and rarely if ever kept follow up information on egg donors who are not also clients. So if a 20 year old donates eggs, then later gets vaginal bleeding and has to have her uterus removed - causing her to be sterile - the fertility clinic will not have this fact in their records. So how would you get the data?

The drugs used for egg extract are not FDA approved for this use, if this was any other medical procedure so wide spread, the Feds would jump in and say you can't use possibly life threatening drugs off label - but they are afraid of the older , wealthier and white clients who use this getting into an uproar. This practice has been around for more than 15 years now, and the industry could have done the drug test by now, and made it onlabel - but varies studies in the American Medical Journals imply the drugs might not be found safe enough, if so there would be no approval, and it would be specifically ordered by the FDA that it couldn't be used for this purpose, and that is why an extremely wealth industry hasn't done the drug studies, and taken the risk the feds could order them to stop.

You don't pay for kidneys, because donating them is a real health risk to the donor, who needs to be donating for reasons other than money. The donor also needs full discloser of the risk. You shouldn't pay for eggs, because donating them can cause real health risk to the donor, and because the industry doesn't track past results, it can't honestly tell the donor their odds.

Also we don't pay for kidneys, because it creates a black market where people will steal kidneys, by killing and harvesting a source. And we don't want to create that kind of market. With an aging population, and possible stem cell cures (which will require eggs to create the drugs) the demand for eggs will increase, and if we are selling eggs, the demand and black market will be come life threatening to women all over the world.

Now in IVF - where the donor will also be the receiver, they are one not donating for money, but to get pregnant, and are probably ready to take any risk (it is still unethical for the industry not to have industry wide accurate and auditable data to inform her with after 15 years) I don't see the problem, it doesn't create a black market, and it is for her own use, and if she donates her extra eggs -- why is that a problem? The issue is exposing people to risk without telling them the truth. It is in creating black markets, its not in the desire to get pregnant, or donating your own extra eggs.