Women were litterally employed as computers ca. WWII. When the transition was made to programmable machines, they were in majority the first ones to use, operate, program and design algorithms for them. The field was regarded as uninteresting, tedious, and not real engineering by their male counterparts.
Early programming was viewed as "women's work" because of the similarity between between the work and sewing [1]. I don't think it was quite 80:20 women:men in 1965, but it was certainly higher than 20:80.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing
Women were litterally employed as computers ca. WWII. When the transition was made to programmable machines, they were in majority the first ones to use, operate, program and design algorithms for them. The field was regarded as uninteresting, tedious, and not real engineering by their male counterparts.