American Girl's New Doll "Courtney" Is the Game Developer the '80s Needed

The mid-'80s was a notable time for women in computer science--because that was when they started disappearing. From 1970 into the start of the 1980s, the percentage of computer science degrees conferred to women rose, peaking at 37.1 percent in 1984. But this number then dipped drastically, and we've never recovered. The most recent report from the Computing Research Association shows the number of women graduating with computer science bachelor's degrees, in its sample of U.S. institutions, in 2019 at 21 percent. So, after decades of women representing both pioneers of computing and a large percentage of the day-to-day programming workforce, what happened in the '80s?