[ArbitraryLimits]

Back in the day I think the popular perception of programmers was kind of an extension of a secretary (it's just typing on toggle panels instead of a typewriter, right?) so there were lots of women stuck in secretarial positions who tried it out.

[pmb]

...and those secretaries were good at it. And so were the women math PhDs who could not get jobs elsewhere. And so were the women who had female mentors, and therefore failed to be chased away. All of which dumps water on the "innate abilities" trope that people keep bringing up as the null hypothesis which must be disproved, instead of the claim which requires proof.

It genuinely weirds me out how many white males in tech see no conflict or even feel a shiver of historical echoes when they argue the premise that they (white men) are intrinsically genetically gifted in ways which other groups are not, and that is why they are superior (at technology). Every other time it has ever been argued, it has been false.

Unless the argument was that white men are better at the combination of having penises, privilege, and low amounts of melanin --- we have that hat trick down.

[ArbitraryLimits]

I wasn't arguing the "women aren't good at programming" position.

My personal opinion is that the most important reason there are few women programmers, next to which any other factor fades into insignificance, is that women are simply less interested in doing it. Now that I think about it, the fact that there used to be many more women programmers when women's career options were more limited is pretty strong evidence that this is true: Now that women have more options, there are fewer women programmers.