[VLM]

The general public unthinking consumer type is of the opinion there exists only one type of IT person. We all are experts on removing viruses from their windows machines and purchasing the "best" PC or phone, etc.

Career decisions are usually made by kids who are legendary for poor decision making in general and are (intentionally?) not very well informed. It would be interesting to compare the choices made by kids who decide they're going to "do computers" at age 6 vs adults retraining at age 35 (as if on average someone that old will be hired, but I digress)

[ksk]

But surely, an adult who makes a conscious decision to enter the CS/IT field knows about the different domains in a much more real sense. Why would a woman not choose a CS career path in that case? She would know the difference between a technically challenging programmer position vs a support desk job.

[VLM]

The humans I've run into who didn't choose a IT career path definitely know nothing about the difference between programmer, sysadmin, and helpdesk, not even that the differences exist. If I didn't have an uncle in the biz I wouldn't even know there's a categorization of rough/structural carpenters and finish carpenters. I don't think most people make career decisions based on extensive rational data gathering of the whole human experience of work before picking a career.