Are the rest of the STEM career paths seen as more social than CS? Is mathematics more social than CS? Because CS is almost (not quite: physics is almost as bad) unique among STEM specializations for its gender disparity.
I talk regularly to academic math people (because cryptography) and the sense I have is that if anything, CS is far more social than the work they do --- to get anything significant done in technology, you have to coordinate and cooperate amongst teams of people. And yet if you go to a cryptography conference and then a technology convention, the difference will be starkly apparent: there are far more women in the former than the latter.
I don't think this is a persuasive explanation for the whole phenomenon.
I talk regularly to academic math people (because cryptography) and the sense I have is that if anything, CS is far more social than the work they do --- to get anything significant done in technology, you have to coordinate and cooperate amongst teams of people. And yet if you go to a cryptography conference and then a technology convention, the difference will be starkly apparent: there are far more women in the former than the latter.
I don't think this is a persuasive explanation for the whole phenomenon.