Berlin is way better than Dubai. Berlin has more atmosphere and is not that "american" like Dubai. Berlin has a big developer scene and millions of startups and meetups. But remember, weather is not that nice in Germany :D
I think IT and especially open source is one area, where your gender, background, sexual orientation doesn't matter. The most open source projects I'm using or working on, are made by people I don't know how they look. The only thing that matters is the ability of writing good code.
The author is in that point right, that there are more male programmers than female. But to solve this problem you have to start way earlier, with getting the interest to tech things of a child (regardless of gender) in school or even earlier.