"What was it about the 1970s and early 1980s that made Computer Science more welcoming to women? And what changed? I want the answer to this question too!" A h

"What was it about the 1970s and early 1980s that made Computer Science more welcoming to women? And what changed? I want the answer to this question too!" A hypothesis (remember this is only a hypothesis): What changed was that science and math became way less cooler in the (American) public perception between the 80s and the 2000s. With the cold war and space race, scientists and engineers were supposed to be the people who took the US to the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were, after all, engineers. The last flight to the moon was in 1972. The Voyagers were launced in 1977. Scientists, astronauts, and their like were cool, for a change. No one cared about who was winning college football when people were going to the moon and exploring the Solar System. My theory is that CS / Engineering got caught along in this wave and experienced strong female enrollment Later, in the late 90s, and early 2000s, films like American Pie and whatnot came along, and solidified the appeal of the sports-playing jock, and making fun of the "nerds". Suddenly, nerds were the weak, spotty kids who were buried in their math books, and girls did not want to be associated with them. Enter present day, with probably 10% of CS classes in good schools being composed of women (unless it's MIT etc., which preferentially admits women to even the ratios, if I remember correctly) To see the attitude change, just think of television programs. The scientist/astronaut Major Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) was portrayed as a strong, positive, and socially successful character. The scientists in Big Bang Theory are portrayed as a bunch of socially inept shut-ins who are very socially/romantically unsuccessful and are supposed to be pitied by the audience.