[wpietri]

Sure, but what would have other people said? At least for the ones I visited, those environments were pretty gender-imbalanced. The guys did the smart work. Women did clerical work. Would you have internalized it?

Would a secretary have tried to get you to play with dolls? Would one of the programmers have told you that you'd make a fine keypunch girl? Would an aunt have told your parents that you should be doing something more appropriate?

Even now, kids get a ton of gender policing. Back then, there was a lot more of it. And one of my privileges is that my technical interests happened to match my gender role.