[MichaelMoser123]

that is a good explanation, however it does not explain why women did choose programming as a career path before 1984 - were women less clever/was a high salary less important just before 1984 or was programming a more promising career path? I don't know.

i heard another explanation - that the home computer brought about a shift in how pop culture did perceive programmers, from now on it was a thing for male geeks. Was that because home computers did not have a particularly friendly user interface at that time ? I don't know.

Before that it was like any other white collar office job, after that popular culture became to associate it with you know who. It might be that this image did have some influence on career choices.

Again, these are all guesses because nobody can anything definitive on the subject.