[in3d]

The article you cite is fluff and doesn't support the statement that "women used to dominate software development." It mentions the "Computer Girls" article from the 1967 Cosmopolitan, but here is what's in it: "At one point the author speculates, seemingly without irony, about the “ the chances of meeting men in computer work. ”(The conclusion she comes to is that these are “ very good, ” as the field was currently “overrun” with men.)"

http://homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/files/Ensmenger2010-M...

Apparently, the best guess is that between 11% to 50% of programmers were women back then.

"Mandel suggests that one out of every nine working programmers was female. This is probably overly conservative. The exact percentage of female programmers is difficult to pin down with any accuracy—even figuring out the total number of programmers in this period is difficult—but other reliable contemporary observers suggest that it was closer to 30, or even 50, percent.3 The first government statistics on the programming profession do not appear until 1970, when it was calculated that 22.5 percent of all programmers were women—an estimate more than twice Mandel’s.4"

"Of course, computing itself is a very broad term covering a multitude of occupational categories, including high - status jobs like computer programming and systems analysis as well as low - status jobs such as keypunch operator. Women tended to congregate in the lower end of the occupational pool in computing"

[linkregister]

Thanks for providing this alternate perspective and invalidating my source. I will reconsider my position.

Can you account for the significant amount of women computer scientists making ground-breaking discoveries? Grace Hopper, et. al. Were the outliers?

I'm asking because I genuinely am unsure.