<Anecdote> My first programming job was at a transportation enterprise with many programmers that had been working there 15-20+ years, many of whom mainly maintained the COBOL that ran the business. Many of those senior programmers were women; it felt like over 50% in the senior cohort. What really made me sad was that the younger programmers there were predominantly male (although still quite a few female!). That company mainly hired out of the local engineering colleges, so it was an interesting case study on how the number of women entering software engineering programs went down over the years. </Anecdote>
I recall hearing (can't remember where) that in the olden days, computer programming was considered akin to typing or secretarial work, so at first it attracted mostly women.
