If half of all potentials self select out then you end up with an inferior end result. Humanity is worse off if we miss out on potentially half of what might be the best hope simply deciding (or being forced) not to participate. This is just as true for fighter pilots as it is for nurses as it is for programmers.

Many disciplines, (tech more so than most) have cultures of exclusion. Apprenticeships, unions, country club boardrooms and brogramming are all forms of it. When you create these real or psychological barriers to entry ... See above.

You might not like programming and perhaps you should reconsider it as a career for yourself if you find it so terrible. It seems rather petty though to suggest that since you don't like it (particularly as a man) that women in general should not like it.

Tech tends to pay outrageous salaries. Even if the work is objectively crappy, should everyone not have an equal opportunity to get the big bucks?

Ah yes, the "club". I would argue not tech more than most. Never in history has a club so provided all the information needed to participate so freely and openly. So it's not about exclusion in that way.

My wife and I talk about this a bit, one idea that comes up is that if there is disenfranchised group of equal or superior talent (eg in this case women) then there is also a strong opportunity to form a competing "club" - if you can't join em, beat em.

I like programming as a hobby, I'm just saying as a job it's just like any job out there. There is nothing special about it. I'm not saying that because I'm a man then woman shouldn't like it also, it's just an example that some men also find working as a programmer boring.

Tech doesn't pay outrageous salary except in the US. Literally woman have the same opportunity as men in the third world country that I live in. It seems just a United States issue actually

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe because you can't spell "there?" ;)