@t54r4n1 IMO, institutional sexism persists because companies aren't willing to fire "good developers" for being sexist or slowing down colleagues.

Until an org is willing to fire someone for even suspected discrimination (because it's very hard to prove, IMO), these kinds of cultures persist. People usually freak out when they hear this and shout things like 'thought crime' because implementing something like this when looking at purely individual situations is really hard.

If we shift from the idea that developers are individual 'rock stars' and onto the idea that developers are teams (and that a single mean dev can ruin team dynamics), management gets more complicated, but you see much better performance, IMO. Without a team-focused management strategy, you get a situation like "it's fine for an individual dev to be biased because it doesn't impact personal performance" and "my senior dev isn't sexist, the junior female dev just isn't learning much because she's less good".

It can often take a long time for the junior dev to find out that they're being treated differently by seniors than other peers, which can add to disenfranchisement.

Without changing management style, other ways to help combat this include requiring basic documentation, encouraging collaboration sessions that include the entire team, and keeping track of how much non-spec work is requested through various teammates PRs.