[nadam]

It think this has nothing to do with gender: In those early projects those who got the biggest respect (like John Neumann) have done the intellectual heavy-lifting. Seriously, that guy was a genius. Today it is the same way: The CTO or chief scientist of an elite company gets much bigger respect than a subordinate programmer who mostly does what he/she is instructed to do. This is not a gender issue in my opinion. Women like Yahho CEO Marissa Mayer or researcher/Coursera founder Daphne Koller are much more respected than an average programer guy maybe at a mediocre company.

[_bfhp]

You are naming anecdotes (really just one that is relevant to the era of history in question) involving individual people, while the writer is pointing out more general trends. I'm going to sympathize with author.