This doesn't exist today? What about Minecraft mods, or building Redstone circuits? Game modding is as big as it was when I went through that cycle, isn't it?
At least, that's what I plan to show my daughter when she gets a bit older to test her interest.
I'd say Bethesda games are likely the exception - though from what I remember, trying to mod Fallout 3 mostly previewed to me how frustrating development can be :p
Edit: For what it's worth, I attended the Syracuse University ischool for my bs/ms and while that's also not a computer science program, my classes were usually at least equally proportioned between men and women. So that's at least a personal anecdote that the runway for women entering tech may be improving.
Modding: check. Scientific(ish) concepts: check. Mathematics: check. Encouraging automation: check.
True, but shouldn't/doesn't matter, especially if the game has no voice chat required (or encouraged by the nature of the game). When I played WoW for a little over a year, the guild I was in had several women. LoL has lots of female players (mostly due to the size of its playerbase), Hearthstone even has a few popular female streamers.
> culture can be toxic
Also true, but most mainstream companies are responsive to feedback about negative players via reporting functionality or something of the like. You deal with negative interactions as a female just by being on social media, games are no different. The main difference is that being a dick to someone is a bannable offence in a lot of mainstream games.
Basically, any platform a person can hide behind a screen is going to have toxic people. Gaming is a lot better about keeping the community in check than ANY social media company.
And neither have anything on sports, where the toxicity can go beyond the internet in quite a few situations. For all the comments about toxicity and causing violence, games actually have a pretty good record by comparison.