2010/03/27 Leon Smith
I've heard rumors that in the early days of programming, that women were in the majority, or at least they represented a much greater proportion of programmers than they do now. I seem to recall that this started to change sometime in the 60s. Of course, I can't recall when or where I heard these stories, and I'm not sure that my source was reliable, so I might be completely off on this count.
Women have been "computers" for a long time but they were not generally the majority or even very well represented. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-female-computers In the Second World War, however, this changed; many, many women were brought into the "computer corps" and the first six programmers of the ENIAC, all women, were drawn from that corps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer So it may have happened that women started out as the majority of programmers and maintained that role for awhile; but as computing evolved more men came to desire the position. Of course, all the bosses were still men; they might prefer to hire other men. Coupled with conservative attitudes about women at work, programming would've become more and more hostile for women and maybe they were motivated to leave. A friend of mine, an engineer now in San Francisco, used to work in defense in Australia. The defense industry there is apparently as conservative as it is in the United States. There were alot of people around who felt that women needn't be in the work place or have jobs like mechatronic engineer. She was greatly motivated to leave. In the forties, where would she have gone? -- Jason Dusek