[rdl]

QA seems really split (even in other industries) between non-technical/non-quantitative QA ("we'll react to faults when identified, handle customer communications, etc.) and highly technical, highly quantified QA (the whole TDD crowd, SEI, etc.)

Even in stuff like pharma, you have people who want to do manual physical inspection and handling recalls, vs. people who want to build statistical controls. Somewhere in between there are human-executed procedure development.

Design seems like a clear case of the "designer pipeline" not having big roadblocks to women anywhere from birth to being a competent designer, unlike (until the past 10 years) some more math-based fields. Pure print design and art are fairly gender balanced, so there was a pool of people there when computer design became a thing; it's probably more likely a great generalist designer early in career would learn about computers and become a computer designer, vs. a math programmer becoming a designer.

Manager, no idea.