[bbarn]

Odd article. Lots of interesting history in there, then the explanation is simply "Today's programming resembles design and construction of large mechanisms a lot more than word processing. The majority of women just don't find these things as interesting as men do."

Seems like the author did a lot of research then just jumped to conjecture for his conclusion.

[buckbova]

There's a lot of that in there:

> Today's programming resembles design and construction of large mechanisms a lot more than word processing. The majority of women just don't find these things as interesting as men do.

Do the majority of men find those things interesting? Do women like word processing and menial tasks?

Is it possible that as the job of software engineer garnered more money and status, women were shut out?

I don't know, but this article doesn't answer these questions.

[sonabinu]

Article seems to look at the gender gap only from a few angles - a natural inclination for design and mechanics, and gender specific marketing of computer devices, and curriculum changes in CS programs. I think there is more to it than that. The salary element, the odd job hours, the gender gap leading to a bigger gender gap as women feel like the odd (wo)man out in programming circles are some causes that need to be examined further. In my opinion to think of early programmer as people who corrected typos and worked on word processing is a biased view.