[pron]

> I would probably hypothesis that CS was seen as a risky degree, so while men are generally less adverse to risk

I don't know about that. Men consistently study fields with higher income potential than women. The current theory is that when CS started gaining prestige and power, the same thing happened as with all professions that carry power and prestige -- women were pushed out (and by that I don't mean that there was some conspiracy, but society simply started directing women away from CS).

[thoughtmonkey]

I could definitely be wrong about the risk factor for girls/guys. It was just another possible issue that could be extrapolated from the data

I still feel that saying "women were pushed out" is the wrong way to phrase it. We can see from the data, that both men and women were "pushed out" of the field, with men recovering from the drop earlier. After reading a bit more, it could be that marketing in the 80's (as suggested by the NPR article) negatively effecting both women and men (which was left out of the NPR article) entering the field, but women ended up more effected.

Side note: drops like this have occurred in other fields at different times. Psychology actually ended up losing a lot of men in the 70s, while women increased. I am sure we could find a few other examples as well.

[pron]

> Side note: drops like this have occurred in other fields at different times. Psychology actually ended up losing a lot of men in the 70s, while women increased. I am sure we could find a few other examples as well.

Absolutely. Many researchers compare those shifts with changing attitudes towards certain professions (say, by counting certain words when they're described in the media etc.), with women participation usually correlated negatively with prestige.

In any case, much of the distinction between masculine and feminine professions is traced back to Victorian times. Of course, similar differences have existed much longer than that and in many cultures, but the Victorians elevated the distinction between gender roles into an elaborate system of social codes (e.g. they had certain rooms in the house more appropriate for men to spend time in, and other for women).