Peter Rysavy takes on the lack of women developers in the tech field: “…if you take a niche area like Tablet PC/ink application development, which accounts for, what, maybe 10% of developers, you could probably count the women (developers) without needing to get your toes involved.”
Culture does a good job of persuading us what’s the appropriate thing to do. I recall a Donahue Show segment in ’88 (I think) where they filled the audience with women graduates from the class of 1968. Donahue asked them what they had wanted to do at the time. Almost all had either wanted to be a nurse or a teacher. By 1988 few were either. Times change.