The main concern is over a "shrinking pipeline" where at every stage, we loose more and more of our geek girls. Two researchers, Clewell and Campbell suggests that the shrinking pipeline is due to girls not figuring out that math and science are fun in elementary school.
Wait a minute, we geeks know how to have fun with math... Programming!
Personally, I hated math and always did poorly until I learned to program. Programming may be just the ticket to get more girls interested in math, science and engineering, and in the process, we just might help out the boys as well.
Additional Notes
1 Under the Microscope: A decade of gender equity projects in the sciences, AAUW Educational Foundation, 2004 http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/underthemicroscope.pdf
2 Clewell and Campbell speculate that college-bound girls may pursue advanced mathematics and science courses to fortify their transcripts for the competitive admissions process, even though these girls are not necessarily inspired by the subject matter and may not have been “exposed to math and science as fun activities early on” in their education. Beyond the "Gender Wars": A Conversation about Girls, Boys, and Education, AAUW Educational Foundation, Feb 2001, page 12 (www.aauw.org) http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/BeyondGenderWar.pdf