My own theory - which I have hinted at before - is that it draws males because it is not competitive - specifically, it draws those who are not, for one reason or another, attuned to that otherwise typical competitiveness, or unsuited for the usual fields of competition, or (like myself) have reasons to shun social activity due to being somewhat out of the norm in some other way.
Some come to it as an alternative form of competition, something which they are better suited to than those things which are traditionally seen as 'masculine'. However, the majority, I think, are those who are have been 'driven off the field', as it were - they seek solitary pursuits such as programming, science, writing, and other things which aren't specifically labeled as 'feminine' as a refuge from competition.
Now, this relates to why it became male-dominated in the first place, and why I think that it will shift in the future.
Prior to 1958 or so, the majority of programmers were women, and most of the male programmers were grad students in the physical sciences. Why? Because programming wasn't consider interesting or important. Hardware was what mattered, and hardware was what men worked on. The rest was just clerical work, with no real skill to it.
This began to change once FORTRAN appeared. Now, the scientists themselves could do the programming without foisting it off on students and staff. They started to realize that programming was both difficult, and interesting in its own right. Meanwhile, COBOL was also being developed, mainly by... the women who were doing the programming for businesses, and who were fed up with being treated as human compilers. FORTRAN was designed for scientists, but COBOL was designed for and by secretaries and clerks - they wanted something for someone who wasn't interested in programming as a profession, and who was (in accordance with the standards of the time) only expected to be in the workforce for a few years before they go off and get married.
But while these changes were significant, they probably would not have caused the massive turnover that occurred in the mid-1960s if it weren't for a chance thing: the creation of Hacker Culture.
And it was a chance thing. If the original plan to ship the TX-0 to the sociology department at MIT had gone through, it might have been years before there were any computers were available for anyone to use without restrictions (the only rule at the office was that you needed to sign up for a block of time, other than that anyone walking in off of the street could use it for anything). Because the TX-0 had become supernumerary after the testing of TX-2 was done, and no one had any specific plans for it, it became a playground for anyone who was curious.
Remember what I said earlier about the reasons people get into intellectual pursuits? This was MIT; any new thing that offered more escape routes from territorialism was seized with both hands by a lot of the students there. You will note that the first group to really take to it was the Tech Model Railroad Club's technical sub-group. Need I say more?
This led to programming being seen as a socially isolated interest, which the solitary nature of programming at the time only reinforced.
This, and the boys-club image of the field, was further reinforced in the 1970s when microcomputers arose. Most of the people building and using them were hardware engineers - in a field where hardware was always seen as a male pursuit - and even more socially isolated than programming. This meant that even the more socially awkward women were generally disinclined to follow up with the field, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So why do I see this changing? Well, first off, hacking culture among programmers is being swamped by the vast numbers of newcomers, many from countries which had no such cultural assumptions - note what was said earlier about the 50-50 split among students in Pakistan and India. In such countries, it is more likely that women will go in the field than men, because men have more options, and because spending all your time at a desk isn't necessarily the most masculine of jobs.
More importantly, the idea that programming is a solitary affair - which hasn't really been true in a long time, if it ever really was - is breaking down as the demand for more programming, and more complex programming projects, grows. If the most important part of the field is interpersonal communication, who do you think that will appeal to most, and more importantly, who do you think it will stop appealing to?
Some time in the next 50 years, I anticipate that the balance will shift, and programming will go back to being "women's work". Not because of any real difference in technical ability, but because of how it is perceived by people.
Yea, do many things come to pass fnord.
_________________ Rev. First Speaker Schol-R-LEA;2 LCF ELF JAM POEE KoR KCO PPWMTF Ordo OS Project Lisp programmers tend to seem very odd to outsiders, just like anyone else who has had a religious experience they can't quite explain to others.
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