I think a major argument against this, in the field of programming in particular, is that most of those other field-related imbalances are culture-neutral. You'll find more male sanitation workers, construction workers, plumbers, etc. everywhere from the US, to Brazil, to China, to Russia, to Pakistan. (Controlling, of course, for the more general inequities in employment-by-gender that those cultures face.)

But the "no female programmers" thing is specific to western culture. There are plenty of female programmers in India, and in Russia. So this is likely something about western culture, that has caused this difference.