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This period is largely a feminist myth. If it existed, it was prior to 1960, when there were vanishingly few programmers at all.
(and before you mention ENIAC, programming that was definitely not a desk job)
It may be the whisper network distorting the idea that computer operators were female.
Operators became majority female in 1975, then almost 70% by 1986, though some of that may have been by separation of job titles rather than an actual change. I'm pretty sure the myth goes back to attempts by feminists to promote the idea, often relying on an article in Cosmopolitan by Grace Hopper which suggested programming was especially suited to women. Hopper, however, was recruiting, not describing an existing situation.
"operators" being more like telephone switchboard operators ?
Some were like that, some were more like typists. According to the 1974-1975 Occupational Outlook Handbook, there were keypunch operators and data typists, both of whom basically did data entry (but not directly to the computer -- to cards or to tape). There were also "console operators", who would switch the tapes and cards in and out. The handbook includes a picture of a console operator -- a woman -- loading a reel-to-reel tape.
The 1974-75 handbook breaks down the gender in a more detailed way than the summary statistics do -- 3/5 "console and auxiliary equipment operators" were men, 9/10 "keypunch operators" were women.
I'm only informed enough to use basic sociology as reference. When the social status of a specific profession appears to be dropping, men start leaving it, and it starts attracting women instead, especially single women. If society starts attaching higher status to it, such as what happened to the IT sector as a whole after, say, 1980 or 1990, it then attracts more men than women.
Still, the 70% figure from 1986 is kind of crazy, but I guess another part of it is that it became more common to hire single women to such positions after reliable contraception became accessible.
This is mere pravda.
The IT sector as a whole in the United States has, as long as such records have been kept, attracted more men than women.
That was 1950. It is more likely the increase in proportion of women was
A general increase in women's employment and
An increase in data-entry "operator" positions (typing, basically, for which women had been predominantly hired for decades) compared to the "console operator" type positions (which we know in 1974 leaned slightly male)
I'm not disputing that.
As far as I know, it's actually Sociology 101. Men are more likely than women to apply to jobs for the purpose of supporting a family or to position themselves as eligible for marriage. This means they're less likely then women to accept positions with bad pay/prospects, no matter what advantages may be on the table. So if people get the impression that the IT sector offers better prospects than they thought, which is basically what happened after the 1980s, it will attract more men than before.
Yes, that makes sense. The devil is in the details.
Which does not make it "not pravda".
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