Misogynist gamers, a walking contradiction.

During an e-visit from Melissa McEwan, writer of the blog Shakesville, a specific issue (Gamergate) was brought to light which really got me thinking about women's place in technology and why they would face such scrutiny... Not being able to think of much I put it on the back burner for the week until this evening. A series of fortunate events ensued.

I was doing some work with C-SPAN playing in background when I heard the American writer and biographer, Walter Isaacson, mumble an odd sentence that really threw my concentration for a minute "fewer women are going into programming than they used to". What? Did I hear that right? So, I did some googling,

Walter Isaacson wrote a book: "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution"

And who's on the front cover? A woman: Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace. I continued to google...

Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer. Fascinated with the Italian mathematician Federico Luigi Menabrea's Analytical Machine, Lovelace translated this piece for an English publication. Charles Babbage, a friend of Lovelace's, asked her to expand on the article which is where her mathematical expertise took flight. Lovelace created what would become known as the first algorithm.

"Lovelace’s notes became one of the critical documents to inspire Alan Turing’s work on the first modern computers in the 1940s".

I continued to google... and came to this paper: Pioneering Women in Computer Science

Interesting to note that in the paper, they state that because of the war effort, almost ALL of the early programmers were women. They were often stereotyped because it was said that being a programmer required "patience, persistence and a capacity detail".

Intrigued by my findings I wandered a bit (per usual), found myself browsing reddit, and began to throw around a few key terms ending at the image below from this page. The first general purpose comupter in 1946... with two women working as programmers.

Jeeshum, I should stop using the internet, I could go on and on about this stuff all night.... Here's an article that explains a little bit about whats going on above. (See more in The Women of ENIAC)

Where did women hop off the progression train in computer science? Or did they see the possible dangers of developing games and avoid it? It would be impossible for them to have seen modern gaming coming, wishful thinking I guess...

What i'm trying to get at is that...
Misogynist gamers? But there might not be video games without women... 
How can you express hate towards the gender that set the foundation for your addiction? Maybe that's why you hate them? Addictions are rough, man.

How do we take the "bro" out of "brogrammer" and replace it with "pro". The pro that brought about major pro-gression? Progression that laid the foundation (long ago) for the great advancements we see everyday.
Not to say progression isn't occurring in the absence of women, but is progress slowed by their absence?


Pages of interest:
Women in computing
IT Gender Gap
Top Secret Rosies: The Female 'Computers' of WWII which is on Netlfix
The Wiki page for Women and Video Games (interesting read)