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That sentiment might be jumping the gun. I was just a kid playing around with a DEC PDP-11 when the TRS-80/Apple ][/Commodore Amiga wave of personal computers h

That sentiment might be jumping the gun. I was just a kid playing around with a DEC PDP-11 when the TRS-80/Apple ][/Commodore Amiga wave of personal computers hit homes (I wasn't exposed to the earlier, Homebrew Computer Club-era, MITS Altair/Apple I/Heathkit H8 wave of personal computers). I clearly recall IT staffing at the company where the PDP-11 came from heavily staffed by women. However, even the daughters of those women at that time who I got to meet, to the last one, had zero interest in anything having to do with computers. Except maybe for the occasional game that caught their fancy. Usually storyline-driven themes like On-Line Systems aka Sierra Entertainment titles and Pac-Man clones; they rejected all of the dungeon crawlers or shoot-up themes. I recall even as a youngster thinking at the time the displayed gender preferences very odd, as computers to me were neutral territory where neither gender had an obvious physical or social advantage at the outset. I am guessing that the early marketers likely observed the same emergent social behaviors, and decided to market to where the money was. Meeting hundreds of people in the industry, it is vanishingly rare to find a woman who bugged her parents as a young girl for an early-era home computer; that story is so common among men it is a pedestrian trope. I'd dearly like to know from marketers who were involved in that era to chime in on what kind of market research led them to tilt the early marketing towards men and boys.

ghaff 11y ago
My memory of the BBS crowd in the 1980s was that it was something of a mix but definitely skewed male. As someone else said, that's probably the natural outgrown of interest in ham radio, phone phreaking, electronics kits, etc. All of which it's probably fair to say skewed male.
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  I experienced the same. Even the BBS' that deliberately were set up as social hangouts, which had the greatest ratio of women to men participants, still skewed about 70% male. I never saw it reach parity online, but interestingly, face-to-face parties brought out an evenly-mixed group as BBS users attended with spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends. I see the current generation computer users' behaviors addressing this imbalance in user population, though not the software development business that produces that utility (lots of hygienic factors adversely impact the majority of jobs in our business now, compared to the state of the business 2+ decades ago).

ghaff 11y ago

My memory of the BBS crowd in the 1980s was that it was something of a mix but definitely skewed male. As someone else said, that's probably the natural outgrown of interest in ham radio, phone phreaking, electronics kits, etc. All of which it's probably fair to say skewed male.

yourapostasy 11y ago
I experienced the same. Even the BBS' that deliberately were set up as social hangouts, which had the greatest ratio of women to men participants, still skewed about 70% male. I never saw it reach parity online, but interestingly, face-to-face parties brought out an evenly-mixed group as BBS users attended with spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends. I see the current generation computer users' behaviors addressing this imbalance in user population, though not the software development business that produces that utility (lots of hygienic factors adversely impact the majority of jobs in our business now, compared to the state of the business 2+ decades ago).