[notanzaiiswear]

I don't think boys were generally encouraged to get into programming. A friend of mine who was openly into computers was ridiculed by the whole school. To this day parents are suspicious of "screen time", I am constantly fighting my wife to let her allow my son use the computer. There were specific jokes about people in Engineering at university, as to them being all male and never getting laid.

Schools started to have "computer rooms" but teachers were not well qualified to use them or to teach students about their use.

My male friends who were into computers would have loved it if girls were interested in that. They just weren't, unless they needed help with their homework or something.

In my Maths degree women did get a lot of encouragement and people are always eager to help. For example a friend of mine received a stipend for her achievements after the first year of study. By her own admission she wasn't the most brilliant student, although at least I think she was very "straight" (always doing her homework, always studying in time for tests, and so on). Only with hindsight did I realise that she probably got the stipend because she was a woman (to generally encourage women in Maths perhaps).