2 ms·
> ...other fields, in particular medicine and law Women were literally not allowed to be doctors or lawyers, either by law or by certification boards. Programm
by humanrebar 9y ago
> ...other fields, in particular medicine and law
Women were literally not allowed to be doctors or lawyers, either by law or by certification boards. Programming has never been a field requiring certification.
- tptacek 9y agoThere was persistent and powerful bias against women in medicine and the law long after women were officially allowed into the field. The fields themselves did things to correct these problems.
- rayiner 9y agoAt least in law that's not true. There were licensed women lawyers long before it became common for women to be in the profession.
- humanrebar 9y agoI was referring to when women were disallowed from law schools or bar associations. But there's a bit of nuance to the history of it. Women have been in court in different ways for a long time. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/women_lawyers.html http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/women_lawyers.htm...
- rayiner 9y agoWomen were allowed into the bar long before hiring them was routine. The New York bar admitted its first women in 1886. But it was in the 1970s (as a result of a class action lawsuit) that firms were forced to routinely hire women attorneys. Today, half of associates in large law firms are women. That's the legacy of affirmative action programs. The change turned out to be self-sustaining, even after the programs were removed.
- humanrebar 9y agoMy point was that the history of the tech sector and the history of the legal profession are not similar. Hopefully that's very clear at this point.
- tptacek 9y agoAnd his argument is that in this one sense they are, except that computing professions haven't yet taken the corrective steps medicine and the law have. The evidence seems to strongly support his argument.