That's kinda true. It explains why women outside of the tech industry would look at the tech industry and say "there should be more women doing that kind of thing", when they wouldn't say that about garbage collection or being in prison. But I don't think the opinions of people outside of the industry are really what we're talking about here - this thread is discussing efforts within the industry to recruit more women.
I'd see it like this: 20 years ago, being a geek was Not Cool. Being a female geek was Very Not Cool, and it's still not something that society feels able to celebrate in the way that, say, being a female lawyer or doctor or CEO is regarded as good.
20 years ago, the average man would have been given shit by people for being a software developer, and some of these stereotypes still linger. Now things are different. Software developers are now highly paid, influential and respected. We've removed a lot of the stigma from being geeks, and this is a good thing, but the program is not complete yet. Being a proud, successful geek is still hard for women, in a similar way to how it used to be for men.
What people are trying to do here is not harm the interests of men in favour of the interests of women, but advance the interest of geeks against those who think that being a geek is something bad, and that being a female geek is unacceptable according to their idea of what women should be like.
Being excluded from high status professions hurts the social status of women as a whole. It's a legitimate concern if you're interested in raising the social status of women.
As far as the profession is concerned, there are probably a lot of women with the potential to become good programmers and it would be a shame to exclude them. So there is an argument from both sides. What changed is the status part of the question.
The point is that women want more status, thus people see that status giving jobs with few women have a "problem"