Computing and tech in general has a pre-established stereotype of the spotty boy geek who sits at his desk coding all day long. Its this stereotype which deters girls from getting into computers at a young age, they are more likely to follow their peers to more traditional activity’s. Girls are generally hesitant, fearful of the machines and often need guided encouragement because of it. This stereotype is now of course out dated with the move from "computer science" to "friendly home computing" which has taken place over the past decade. But society still encourages boys to be more interested in computers resulting in more self-confidence then girls.
Another huge factor in this gender gap are the games themselves. If you walk into a computer games shop and look at the titles you will find very few female orientated games. Even neutral titles like SimCity are few are far between. Girls don’t want to be playing the lastest blood and guts spurting title like Quake. I don’t even think game developers know what the female market if after as the current developers are the spotty boys! But lets not get too carried away here by making even more stereotypes, I know women who love games like Grand Theft Auto, does that contain fluffy bunnies (?), as far as I know, it does not. What games does the female market want?
So what is the key here, id have to say education. If more girls were introduced to gaming at a younger age, the gender barrier would soon deplete. I’m guessing most of the people now doing multimedia type jobs played computer games before they ever touched HTML, Photoshop right? See a link? Gaming is the perfect way of introducing people into the computer industry and if developers were more creative in bringing girls in at a younger age, I’m sure that in years to come the male saturated industry would soon fizzle out.