You are assuming that the change in the 80s was something that made programming less attractive to women. But that's not the only change that could explain what happened. It could be that one or more other fields changed to become more attractive to women.
Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming.
There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010.
The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they?
It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise.
Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off.
During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too.
Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming.
There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010.
The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they?
It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise.
Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off.
During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too.
[1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
[2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wome...