It flipped because the roles programmer (largely women) and analyst (mostly men) became programmer-analyst. The role women were dominating was collapsed into the one men already dominated.
At the exact same time (at least in the US), which was the 1980s, law and medicine (as in doctors, not nurses) rapidly shot toward near-parity of participation by men and women, while both being high-pay and much higher-prestige than anything to do with computers—now, still, but especially then. That the profession becoming higher-paying and a “big deal” was the cause of this shift doesn’t make much sense, given what else was going on at the same time.
[edit] to be clear, I’m not denying the existence of a gap, or making claims about whether it should be addressed—in fact, I think understanding the cause is vital if we do want to address it.
At the exact same time (at least in the US), which was the 1980s, law and medicine (as in doctors, not nurses) rapidly shot toward near-parity of participation by men and women, while both being high-pay and much higher-prestige than anything to do with computers—now, still, but especially then. That the profession becoming higher-paying and a “big deal” was the cause of this shift doesn’t make much sense, given what else was going on at the same time.
[edit] to be clear, I’m not denying the existence of a gap, or making claims about whether it should be addressed—in fact, I think understanding the cause is vital if we do want to address it.