[philwelch]

Another big difference is that lots of civil engineers are employed in the public sector, which (for various reasons) tends to employ more women than the private sector. The same correlation is seen in EE's, where there's a lot more women in power engineering than in other fields. Unless you can create tons of public sector software engineering jobs (which sounds worse than dreadful to be honest) you're not likely to replicate that.

[jarek]

Why do you think more public sector software engineering jobs would be dreadful?

Perhaps women are attracted to public sector-type jobs, for some values of "public sector type", rather than a specific engineering discipline. How will that change the gender ratios question?