That's because computer programming used to be a female-dominated field back in the day. http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/02/women-didnt-just-recently-start-coding-actually-stopped-coding-decades-ago/

I definitely noticed that gender trend, especially some of the cheesier fashion model type covers that were typical for many of the foreign computer mags. But, as Kelly correctly points out, many of the top coders back in the day were women. It was a different universe then . . . back in the early days of Comdex and all that.

I noticed the same thing, how interesting/curious it was that so many of these covers featured women.

Let me mansplain this: it was a good thing they passed that law back around '94 that legalized the purchase of computers by women. Women didn't buy computers in the 80s and early 90s because it was considered "nerdy" and complicated. It took some work to get PCs to do some of the basic things we take for granted today. Women didn't care about any of it until the computer did everything for them.