Without wanting to go too far out of my depth, I have read a few times now that a lot of the perceived growth in autism rates could be attributed to our society pushing people into adopting behaviors previously attributed to "actual" autism. Spending time on the computer as a kid (playing video games, etc.) is still mostly a boy activity, because of societal reasons, and can certainly lead to adopting these behaviors later in life in some cases (not making any value judgment here). I would be willing to bet that, had programming stayed a women-dominated position, we'd have more women than men on the spectrum today.