> CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today
This is a profoundly misunderstood statistic.
1. Programming in those early days was considered more secretarial work,
2. the greater sexism in other jobs made CS more palatable, ie. women took what jobs they could, not necessarily the ones they wanted; this same trend is why Iran and other oppressive countries have such high female enrollment in STEM
3. Female enrollment gained slowly, but male STEM enrollment sky rocketed in the 80s. You can't point to a huge spurt of interest among men and use that to say that obviously those men somehow prevented the same growth in interest among women. There are clearly other factors in play.
This is a profoundly misunderstood statistic.
1. Programming in those early days was considered more secretarial work,
2. the greater sexism in other jobs made CS more palatable, ie. women took what jobs they could, not necessarily the ones they wanted; this same trend is why Iran and other oppressive countries have such high female enrollment in STEM
3. Female enrollment gained slowly, but male STEM enrollment sky rocketed in the 80s. You can't point to a huge spurt of interest among men and use that to say that obviously those men somehow prevented the same growth in interest among women. There are clearly other factors in play.
All of this and more is fully documented by Scott Alexander: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...