Apollo Guidance Computer History: Margaret Hamilton's introduction (2001)

" but according to my records and looking back, before 1960 I believe more than half the programmers in this country were females. ... They often took people who ran Monroe calculators and all of those, and retrained them for the scientists, and they were the programmers. They can't get females to go into programming now."

The aspect that when programming was considered administrative or key punching job, women were preferred is quite saddening.