I’d be curious what the percentage of women that are in other facets of Design.
For example, User Experience Design and Interaction Design. Even Graphic and/or Brand Development within companies tend to be, from my observation, more balanced based on gender.
I would lean more towards what the mindset tends to be for Industrial Design vs. other niches under the umbrella of Design.
Industrial Design is much closer to engineering on the spectrum of design. I tend to find, that industrial design is closer to the quantitative side as opposed to, say, UX which tends to be more qualitative.
Using traditional gender assessment qualities as a guiding factor in this discussion, logic guides me to seeing this as making sense. ID will, in my opinion, not see a gender balance of better than 60/40 with 70/30 or less being more to what my gut tells me as being accurate.
This has nothing to do with a woman’s capability, but more to do with pure natural interest in what tasks are part of the ID process. I would posit that design roles that are more qualitative in nature will draw more women to it.
Something else to consider is that I believe were on the cusp of a significant cultural change. “The Man” is about to peter out. I tend to believe that my generation (I was born in '71) is exhausted by the boys club nature of the Baby Boomer and previous generations. This applies not only to gender issues, but racial, and other social faux pas of our previous generations.