If a man told you he worked with computers, it’d be odd to raise an eyebrow and respond “Are you some kind of computer boy?”. The technician treated this woman’s work as something special because she was a woman. In other words: A man that works with a computer is still just a man. A woman that works with a computer must be something special, a computer girl.
And bonus points for calling her a girl, which is just a little bit more infantilizing.
I was scrolling through job postings today and came across one that read like this. I was confused -> clicked the link -> saw a picture of two oil rig workers -> genuinely said “Ah, oil!” out loud -> and closed the web page.
They try to hide behind green washing and jargon. It happened to me at a university career fair a few months ago, too.