Thanks for posting that, it was really interesting: partly because it validates my perception that other women were much more involved in IT in the early days, but also because it reflects my observation that the overall atmosphere in IT changed (and largely for the worse, IMHO) with the rise and rise of the PC. In the UK, that also coincided with the banking industry becoming a dominant force in computing and, though I can't speak for anyone else, I found the culture to be rather nasty, aggressive and off-putting.
It's encouraging to see that more women are going back into IT: not just in itself, as I'm not a believer in quotas or whatever, but I think maybe it represents another change in culture and perhaps those elements that I found less appealing are on the wane. I'd love things to be more like they were when I started off. Which of course means fewer PCs on desks and more green-screens connected to mainframes and Unix-based minis.
PCs and their fancy graphics should be relegated to their proper domain: gaming!
