People haven't aspired to become software engineers for generations. Only the past few years. In 1990, no one told their daughters that they could be software engineers. They told their daughters they could be lawyers and doctors, or maybe Senators, or business executives. Software engineering? Who wanted to do that?
Out of 150 students that graduated my year of high school (2003), an all boys school, I was the only one who chose to follow a computing career.
All my friends, even those with a similar (or more advanced) aptitude and interest in computers, chose different paths. Chemistry. Theoretical Physics. History. Politics. Economics.
Nobody wanted to be doing computing professionally. Men were/are afforded to be outcasts or underdogs, socially; there's some romanticism to it. I'm not sure the same has applied for women, but maybe that's changing.
