1. It does follow if you add in the money & prestige aspect. For a long time software development was neither lucrative nor prestigious so a lot of men simply weren't interested. As economic expectations for computer science careers grew, so did the number of men.

2. I personally don't find software dev collaborative or social in any meaningful way compared to other careers or industries.

Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries.

In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads.

So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm.

That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).

from the 80s there were huge advances in mainstream feminism. For many people it was around 1998-2008 that a lot of people in their circle became feminist

The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing. That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

I think the answer to your question is precisely that, with all the campaigns in the west telling women to follow their own path, do whatever they want, etc. they ended up predominantly choosing careers they actually like (nursing, teaching, anything that has to do with people)

There are always exceptions, obviously.

> Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

I believe this to be missing the point. There are many women that are 100% aligned with the personality trait of an idealized engineer, no one (or at least not Damore) contest that.