I worked for a fortune 500 company back in the 80's and approx half of the programmers were women. Most of these were american. Back then they paid programmers approx $30,000/year. Well, fast forward to 2010 and 80% of programmers are from India all men. The other 20% are mostly from China, all men again. I asked one of the programmers from India, Vikram was was his name, how much money his is making now. He told me $15,000 per year. YEAH, 15 not 50 folks and it gets worse. The CEO wants to shut down programming in US and move it all overseas. He feels he can cut costs by out sourcing.

OK one woman college grad in computer science who worked there in the 80's stayed on in until the 90's and she told me she was working 80-90 hours per week, on call 24/7 and with no vacations, time off was zero. IT was terrible she told me and they always say "There are millions of programmers that wish they could have your job making $30,000/year."