If this is at all accurate, then all it is saying is that programming started as a pink collar ghetto. The article itself indicates it was dominated by women as

If this is at all accurate, then all it is saying is that programming started as a pink collar ghetto. The article itself indicates it was dominated by women as long as it was considered "glorified clerical work." This is actually really normal stuff, not peculiar to the computer industry. "Serious jobs" tend to get dominated by men. This may be related to "the second shift" -- that women seek jobs that don't take an excess of their energy so they can go home and cook, clean, etc. Men are much more often in a position to say "Woman, get me a beer" and just collapse after giving their all to their job. I don't know a solution. But, I think we aren't going to find one if we don't first recognize that one of the roots of such problems is not that women are predisposed to certain kinds of labor, but that society as a whole expects women to do "women's work" at home and this is rooted in the reality that women can get pregnant, men cannot. A lot of traditional gender roles grow out of that and a lot of societal expectations grow out of that and it wasn't intended to oppress women. It evolved organically as a way for both adults in a household to contribute meaningfully to making ends meet, raising the kids, etc at a time when birth control was not readily available and yadda.