Interesting and sad. The thing that gets me is how much this reveals how artificial the idea that women aren’t cut out for computer science is. Not because women did it before, but because back when it was considered “women’s work” they emphasized it as a job requiring patience and attention to detail, and now that it’s considered a masculine role, it’s all hard analytical skill and dedication…even though the actual raw skill set is the same, even as technology has changed. The women doing it in the 60s and the 70s (like the women writing the code for NASA) were still using analytical thinking and math, the men doing it today still need patience and focus. But when it’s associated with one gender, it’s viewed dismissively, and when it’s associated with the other, it’s a respected and well-paying career …that the other gender is just mysteriously absent from because they supposedly don’t like that sort of thing or aren’t good at it.
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