&gt; Programming was originally an exclusively female profession because it was seen as lowly-paid &quot;women&#x27;s work&quot;.<p>Every time this comes up, someone points out that &quot;programming&quot; was mostly data entry at that time, and that there is a suspicious correlation between the decline in female programmers and the movement of data entry from programmers to administrators.<p>I can&#x27;t seem to find hard data either way, though.  So make of that what you will.