Earliest computer programmers were women and the programming field was stereotyped as female

[jason]

http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D

[Ross]

First kindly note that the reporter was a Ms Brenda D. Frink .
No possibility of bias there right ?

Then follow the logic

managers hired women because they expected programming to
be a low-skill clerical function, akin to filing, typing, or telephone switching.


In 1967, despite the optimistic tone of Cosmopolitan’s “Computer Girls article,
the programming profession was already becoming masculinized.

So it was hard and men took over . Lets not make too many
guesses why that happened .;)


.

[Kassy]

But don't forget Ada Lovelace.

[Ross]

The computer never worked and her program never ran .

Now if Babbage had been helped by a male ....


:D

[gsgs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

[Kassy]

What's chess got to do with it? (It's a nice challenge for programming but i think there's some angle i'm missing).

A lot of very old school programming was about precise data entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card_input/output

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_700/7000_series

[dyrt]

Before there were electronic machines to do business calculations there were rooms full of people with pencils and paper. They did the math that kept a business running. Generally, each person would have a particular function and then pass the paper to the next person. They were called computers and almost all were women. It makes perfect sense that the people you needed to write down the computing steps would be the women that were doing it manually.