In the early days of computing, women were well represented in the computing fields, but in 1984, there was a sharp decline that began in terms of the numbers of women in computer science.
During the rise of the personal computer, the machines were marketed towards men. It then became a part of the cultural narrative that computers & tech & masculinity are intertwined. This matters, because when students go on to study computer science, say, at university, there may be an expectation that the students have some base level of knowledge about computers, which the guys have because of their spending more time with computers when they were younger.
A lot of the women in tv shows/movies who are more geeky and interested in tech are written as unemotional, aloof, and generally non-feminine. There is no problem with women not being feminine! But that’s just a pattern I observe. One great female-coder example I can think of though, is Mac from Veronica Mars :)
When they come from the top of an organization! If the leaders are 100% committed to the efforts, it is likely that is will become a part of company cultre.
For teams that work with creativity and innovation, having people from all sorts of backgrounds brought benefits. Different people saw different ways to solve problems. Diversity helps financial outcomes across the board!
A company led by someone with a physical disability may be more aware of the challenges different people could run into when using the product. For example- if you were working on designing the Kinect or Wii, it would be helpful to have people working on it who were aware of the physical limitations of some sub-set of consumers.