:shrug: The first computer scientist (IMHO) was a woman - Ada Lovelace [1]. It's also my understanding that, when computers were first introduced, they were mostly seen as aide to secretarial work, which is why a lot of the early computer pioneers were women - it was actually women-dominated at that time [2].

So there's (IMO) historical evidence that it's not inherently a "male" field; which I see as evidence that the imbalance is unexpected and undesirable.

(That said, I can't speak to why it's an "urgent" priority)

[1] Babbage invented the mechanical calculator. Ada realized you could do calculations on something other than numbers. IMO that makes Babbage the first computer engineer, and Ada the first computer scientist.

[2] one article of many on this: https://digitalfuturesociety.com/programming-when-did-womens...