Women tend to get chased out of any industry that is shrinking, especially if the industry continues to offer good pay to the survivors. The medical profession has grown, so we have more women doctors. The computer industry has shrunk, so women are getting pushed out. The number of computer programmers in America has shrunk by more than 30%. Sources:<p>Stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA):<p><a href="http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/c...</a><p>2010 Number of Jobs 363,100<p>Especially worth a look:<p><a href="http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/" rel="nofollow">http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/</a><p>"In its 1990 Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Department of Labor was especially bullish: “The need for programmers will increase as businesses, government, schools and scientific organizations seek new applications for computers and improvements to the software already in use [and] further automation . . . will drive the growth of programmer employment.” The report predicted that the greatest demand would be for programmers with four years of college who would earn above-average salaries.<p>When Labor made these projections in 1990, there were 565,000 computer programmers. With computer usage expanding, the department predicted that “employment of programmers is expected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations through the year 2005 . . .”<p>It didn’t. Employment fluctuated in the years following the report, then settled into a slow downward pattern after 2000. By 2002, the number of programmers had slipped to 499,000. That was down 12 percent–not up–from 1990. Nonetheless, the Labor Department was still optimistic that the field would create jobs–not at the robust rate the agency had predicted, but at least at the same rate as the economy as a whole.<p>Wrong again. By 2006, with the actual number of programming jobs continuing to decline, even that illusion couldn’t be maintained. With the number of jobs falling to 435,000, or 130,000 fewer than in 1990, Labor finally acknowledged that jobs in computer programming were “expected to decline slowly.” "
Funny, a 'women programmer' piece that starts in 1967. How about 1946? <a href="http://www.topsecretrosies.com/Top_Secret_Rosies/Home.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.topsecretrosies.com/Top_Secret_Rosies/Home.html</a> In the latter half of the documentary, we meet the programmers of Eniac. It seems the male scientists were Electrical_Engineers, first and foremost. They left the tedious wire plugging demo for the cream of the ballistics calculating department, Betty Jean Jennings.
When I first broke into the realm of professional computer programming, after graduation in the late 80s with a Computer Science degree, the teams I worked on were populated with just as many, if not more, women than men.<p>In total contrast to a Ruby conference I volunteered to help out a few years where the only woman in the conference presence was the SO of the conference founder.<p>Can only speculate on the sociological reasons for this shift, other than toss a personal observation that comparatively, it seems men were the more geeked out, enamored with technology than women who seemed to hold a more pragmatic outlook and confined "work" to working hours only.
"The numbers suggest that women with aptitude are out there; they’re just not choosing computer science"<p>Pretty sure no one thinks women with aptitude aren't "out there".
The word programming causes one to conjure up an image of wizard effect. Someone sitting in a chair and coming up with awesome ideas. Then they bang on the keyboard and stuff spews out. How about we relabel programming something akin with arts. Code is just the utensil. Like oil for painting?