These are some of the ways I think we could increase the number of women in iOS:

Stop making interviews so terrifying

Yes, I know that no one likes interviews, regardless of gender. But since men in general tend to overestimate their abilities, and women tend to underestimate their abilities, interviews are even more scary for women. I know many women who stay in jobs where they are underpaid and overqualified because they are afraid to go on interviews. Why do interviews have to be so intimidating? Since I am a contractor, I go on a lot of interviews, and over the course of my career, interviews have definitely become a much more unpleasant experience. It doesn’t have to be this way. These are my suggestions for making interviews less awful:

1. Stop asking me to do pair programming at interviews. I know the benefits of pair programming, and my current and former colleagues will testify to the fact I that I actually enjoy pair programming with them. However, “pair programming” on a topic that has just been presented to you, with someone (or worse, more than one person) you don’t know, who is there to judge you, bears absolutely no resemblance to pair programming with a trusted colleague on a project that you are familiar with. Why can’t you just look at code that I have already written, and let me walk you through it? If you feel you must have me do some coding during the interview, at least leave me alone and let me have some time to think about it while you aren’t staring at me. And let me do it on a computer so I can write some tests to make sure it is working, rather than making me write code on a whiteboard.
2. Do not allow two young men to interview a candidate at the same time. Sometimes they will be OK, but more than once I have seen two guys try to impress each other by coming up with the most difficult questions, rather than really trying to do a meaningful interview.
3. Make sure at least one of the interviewers is a woman. (Thanks to Aylya Ahmedova for this suggestion.) This will encourage female candidates because they will see that there are women who have some amount of power in the company. And women interviewers will see potential problems with male candidates that male interviewers might miss.

Promote women to higher positions in the company

Nobody wants to work at a job where they see no potential for advancement. But at most companies, there really is a glass ceiling for technical women. I have worked at a couple of companies where the CEO was a woman. But I have never worked at a company where the chief architect, head of engineering, or CTO was a woman. It is not sufficient to promote women to people-managing team lead/babysitting nurturing types of roles.

Teach the non-developers around you to become developers

In Kent’s article he describes workshops he taught to teach people iOS development, which is terrific. Why not start with the women that you are already working with who are not developers? You are probably working with plenty of intelligent women who are QAs, PMs, agile coaches, office managers, etc. Men who did not study computer science or engineering have no problem deciding to become developers, but women seem to feel that they aren’t qualified. My brother majored in English but he is a successful developer and architect. My friend Tina studied mathematics, but with no one to encourage her to become a developer, she worked as a manual QA. We should start encouraging these women to be developers. The next time a QA sends you a bug, sit down with her and show her how to fix it herself.

Team building should happen during work hours

I’m not saying you shouldn’t go out for drinks with your colleagues. But be aware of who you are excluding by doing this. Most mothers aren’t going to be able to join you. Also, does it always have to be at a bar? Bars aren’t much fun for pregnant women (or recovering alcoholics or people who don’t drink for any other reason for that matter.) Make sure there are team building activities that everyone can participate in.