You make some good points, but role models and peer pressure are two different things. In my subjective experience the latter tends to have a significantly larg

You make some good points, but role models and peer pressure are two different things. In my subjective experience the latter tends to have a significantly larger impact. Role models are probably relevant in the first step to make people realise this kind of job is a possible choice. But I doubt it's enough to motivate anyone to stick to it and go through the whole learning process. And afaik the reason female programmers were the majority in the beginning was mostly sexism combined with the view that writing the programs was a trivial task comparable to simple data entry jobs. Which inevitably was proven wrong after a while.