back in the days of mainframe programming, COBOL, Natural, Fortran etc, there were a lot more woman programmers. IMO this was due to the structured training programs and courses that were offered for this which allowed anyone, provided they passed the aptitude tests, to do the courses. Back then I'd say programming courses had a 50/50 male female split and graduates were then placed in suitable roles supporting large mainframe applications. It is the advent of client/server and PC based programming that has seen a shift more to male domination where learning and training has become a more teach-your-self kind of thing and where keeping up with the latest and greated gadgets and technology is what men seem to be more interested in.