Having worked in both, I actually do not think the developer community is better (or less awful) than the advertising / media / sales community. The former is simply more nuanced and subtle. The sexism in the Ad / Media / Sales world is simply more obvious, unhidden and honest. Both are horrible and grotesque - but to be frank, I think that while there is less respect for women in the Ad / Media / Sales world, there is more women-hating in the Developer community.

If we're going to trade ancedotes: I worked at Microsoft, with lots of female co-workers in technical and non-technical roles.

I never once hear a DE, SDE, SDET, or any other technical person say anything remotely along the lines of "women suck at programming because they're women." Not once, amongst the hundreds of people I worked with there. That's an anecdote - take it for what it's worth.

That's what you would expect to observe if either (a) there were negligible sexism, or (b) the sexism was present, but "more nuanced and subtle" in its form. Therefore your observation does not count as strong evidence for distinguishing between these hypotheses. It counts as stronger evidence against widespread overt sexism.

Ditto for me as well. At least in advertising there are other female project managers, assistants and designers you can go to. I've only worked one other job in dev where I've had another female co-worker, and even still that doesn't mean we're close and can confide in each other if we're concerned about something.