It is unclear to me what argument this article is trying to make - the headline makes me think it is about getting early access to computers due to rich parents

It is unclear to me what argument this article is trying to make - the headline makes me think it is about getting early access to computers due to rich parents, and it partly is, but then it dives off on a tangent about gender. (Disclaimer: I fit the stereotype of the title exactly, as I am a male who started programming when I was roughly 10 on a computer bought by my parents.) This is only personal experience, but my family had a computer when I was young (8 or 9, and my siblings are a couple years younger). This was a family computer, not mine personally, and my brother and sister were both exposed to it as well, with equal opportunity to experiment and learn, but neither of them developed an interest in programming or computer technology like I did. There was no gender bias when computer access was given - we all used it on a regular basis. Maybe this is untrue for other families, but my sister had just as much opportunity to uncover computer science aspirations at roughly the same age as me. I certainly agree with the idea that "class" (or at least parents' foresight in buying computers) influenced my ability to get involved with computers early, but I didn't observe any gender bias in this early exposure. Surely this is becoming even more true with the proliferation of computers in everyday life - if you can use Facebook, you have enough access to learn much more about computers. The only impediment is your curiosity about the topic. Perhaps there are other gender-related factors that determine whether one is likely to be a self-motivated proto-hacker, but computer access doesn't seem to be one of them.