Roughly speaking, programmers were all women, from the eniac days (40s) because "everyone knew" the machines the men made did the calculations, they just needed some clerical types to make the arrangements and women were good with tedious work (sic) and couldn't be mathematicians like the men.

Surprise, the women were good at it; the eniac learned how to (plug) program the machines by reading the schematics.

Same logic applied to 1st gen stored program machines, but eventually (early to mid 50s) the men noticed (sic) programming was actually an/the critical skill.

By the late 1950s programming was a male occupation.

Back in england, there was an explicit, stated, plan to get women out of programming. Here in the US it was done the usual American way (shit pay and preferential hiring). We ended up with Mel Kaye and overtly macho programming that still exists today.

There's some but not a lot written about this era and process. It was quite explicit.

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