I remember the class being evenly split between boys and girls, and nobody finding that remarkable--some of us even had moms or aunts who worked with punchcards and mainframes.
The top students in the class were the same diligent girls who prevailed in the honors math and English classes; again, not provoking comment. The understanding was that we were acquiring practical skills for a drab something vaguely understood as "business," so intense interest in programming would have seemed very strange.
By the early Nineties, I noticed that programming had obtained this alienating macho reputation, which I find ironic considering how much GUIs made it so much more accessible, and the Web made it so much more interesting. I haven't read a thorough treatment of this period of computing history--any suggestions?
Judging how America is quickly becoming a Service Industry country, and how necessary a dual income has become, that time may come soon.
I had access to TRS-80 Level I's, and Apple ][e's. My parents bought me a TRS-80 Color Computer, and I purchased an assembler cartridge and was off to the races. I look back fondly as that fog of ignorance slowly lifted and I realized what these incredible machines could do.
I remember maybe two or three women in my computer science classes in college. That changed when I got my first job (in a university setting, where I'm still employed). Developers here are roughly 60/40 male/female. System admins and networking personnel skew wildly male.