>>/5019/
This lie gets told in two forms, both are false but for different reasons. The first for goes like this "programmers used to be mostly women in the 50-60s, look at the ENIAC girls". This is true, but back then programming meant loading a program (written by a man) into a computer. In the case of the ENIAC this was done by rewiring it according to the instructions, with later computers it was through front panels, loading tapes or punched cards. Regardless: not programming as we mean it today.
The second form relies on pointing out the fact that people enrolled in computer science in the early 80s were 35% female. This happened because back then computer science was an easy faculty. Things changed in the mid 80s with the microcomputer boom a lot of CS professors went into the private sector and admission requirements into CS were raised to cope with the professor shortage. Widespread availability of microcomputers also changed the nature of CS from something like mathematics to something more solitary: programmers were now supposed to mostly work alone staring at a computer terminal.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Usenix84_1.jpg/1600px-Usenix84_1.jpg
This is a photo of USENIX84, this happened at the height of female enrollment in CS, you are welcome to count how many women went to USENIX during the golden age of women in CS.