I can't add much more than just curious guesses into this discussion but someone else mentioned the idea of video games attracting people towards programming. I'm pretty sure there is a strong male sexual preference towards video games as children and teens. I wonder if the rise of popularity of video games could coincide with this change? It doesn't have to be that women became less interested, it is possible that a new demographic of people (which happened to skew heavily male) became interested in programming. But anyway, I have nothing to back that up, just spitballin. :p