5 ms·

The First Women in Tech Didn’t Leave, Men Pushed Them Out

29 points by walterclifford 9y ago

coderdude 9y ago
The boogie man is just man.
merricksb 9y ago
Non-paywall archive: http://archive.is/iengE http://archive.is/iengE
- tarboreus 9y ago
  Don't do this if you want it to stick around.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ci5er 9y ago
The article's thesis may or may not be correct, but the proponents of the argument do themselves no favors by conflating programmers with data-entry clerks. EDIT: As far as I know - people like Grace Hopper never got out (also US vs UK and Private vs Government and/or Military jobs, as examples, confound that stats)
- eesmith 9y ago
  I can't read the pay-walled WSJ article but it looks like it's related to the recent book by Dr. Marie Hicks. She recent gave a talk at the Computer History Museum, which covers an example very close to what you objected to. At https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198 https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198 you can see the advertisement "This typist can control your invoicing, stock records and sales statistics all at once ... electronically, but not without help from Susie her computer." Hicks then says that ad copy goes on to describe the types of programming this typist will be doing, "but she's still just a typist, not a programmer." I therefore believe the proponents argument isn't that they themselves conflate the two, but that (British) computing in the 1960s did the conflation. As for Adm. Hopper, yes, certainly some women stayed in the field. But then there's pictures like https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999 https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999 where a woman in her 20s or 30s has a "retirement" party, because she's getting married, so has to leave the workforce - which could be compulsory or coerced. Then once it was realized that programming was more than a clerical task, women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were going to leave once they got married.
  - ci5er 9y ago
    Hmmm. My formative adult years, at the beginning of my career, were spent in Japan, where every female was expected to get married and get out by the age of 28-or-so. I have no opinion or comment on whether that is good or bad for the Japanese men and women in their own society. But after that, I got to the US, and most of the women that I met in "my ranks" of career maturity were definitely very capable - and in it for the long haul. Which is to say: I've never seen the winnowing process up-close-and-personal. I'm guessing that something happens between the ages of 20 and 35? Or maybe less women join in the US in the first place? I don't know. But I think that if we are going to explore what's going on - we're going to have to go upstream of what most of these types of pieces are looking at... > Then once it was realized that programming was more than a clerical task, women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were going to leave once they got married. That's very interesting if it is true. I'll have to dig into this a bit. EDIT: I am a male, if that wasn't obvious.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      Based on your comments, you are around 50 years old, and after growing up in the US spent about 1/3 of your adult life in (mostly) Japan. Figuring (50-18)/3 = 11 years, so you returned in the mid 1990s. The 1980s was the peak time for women entering professional software development, at least as measured by the percentage of women vs. men receiving a BS in computer science. It was 37% in 1984/1985, says https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/women-computer-science-grads--the-bump-before-the-decline.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wom... , while in 2010 it was 18%. Those women who graduated in 1985 at 22 are about 55 years old now. This puts them as slightly older than you, but close enough that they would still be part of "your ranks." I point this out because if you base things on your experience then you should realize that your experience comes from working with an unusual cohort. As you say, there is a US/UK difference. The speaker I pointed to said that the differences in gender expectations were stronger in the UK than in the US, and that part of those expectations was rooted in imperialism.
      - ci5er 9y ago
dominotw 9y ago
There has never been a better time to be a woman in the valley. My female family members have gotten a job everywhere they have interviewed, even at the top tier. There is no "pushing out" now, infact its the opposite, everyone from recruiter to the hiring managers have high level okr's and bonuses for finding and hiring women. Is it really necessary to dig out some skeletons and create some controversy where there is none.
- eesmith 9y ago
  I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time. (As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that historians stop what they are doing? I also don't understand what controversy you think is being created. We all knew that women were forced out of the field in the 1960s and 1970s, so that isn't controversial, and we know that the percentage of women in the computing industry is still not back to what it use to be. I didn't, however, know the details of why that happened. Hicks' recent talk for the Computer History Museum helped me understand just how strong the cultural reasons were in that era against women having managerial positions over men in that era, and how the presumption that women would leave once getting marriage collided with the increasing professionalization of the field to help get women kicked out. Even if times are great for women now, surely it's important to know some of the history of when it wasn't great? As an analogy, in school we learned about poor working and food safety conditions at the start of the Progressive Era, in order to understand the impact of muckrackers like Ida M. Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, and legal actions like the split-up of Standard Oil and creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act. If we don't know how things were, we don't understand why anti-trust and food protections laws are still on the books. That said, the WSJ article is pay-walled. The introduction makes me think it's to do with Hick's new book "Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing". It might instead cover something else, and I'm simply out of the loop.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    >I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time. (As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that historians stop what they are doing? Quoting an analysis from the past, saying situation is still the same in top tech companies and implying that current situation is due to "men pushing women out" . He even quotes an internal google memo that says " women overall are biologically less suited to programming" as an example of men today bent on pushing women out. Hope you see the controversy part. Surely you can see this article is not purely historical curiosity and not at all like an article about history of food safety conditions.

coderdude 9y ago

The boogie man is just man.

merricksb 9y ago

Non-paywall archive: http://archive.is/iengE http://archive.is/iengE

tarboreus 9y ago
Don't do this if you want it to stick around.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ci5er 9y ago

The article's thesis may or may not be correct, but the proponents of the argument do themselves no favors by conflating programmers with data-entry clerks. EDIT: As far as I know - people like Grace Hopper never got out (also US vs UK and Private vs Government and/or Military jobs, as examples, confound that stats)

eesmith 9y ago
I can't read the pay-walled WSJ article but it looks like it's related to the recent book by Dr. Marie Hicks. She recent gave a talk at the Computer History Museum, which covers an example very close to what you objected to. At https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198 https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198 you can see the advertisement "This typist can control your invoicing, stock records and sales statistics all at once ... electronically, but not without help from Susie her computer." Hicks then says that ad copy goes on to describe the types of programming this typist will be doing, "but she's still just a typist, not a programmer." I therefore believe the proponents argument isn't that they themselves conflate the two, but that (British) computing in the 1960s did the conflation. As for Adm. Hopper, yes, certainly some women stayed in the field. But then there's pictures like https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999 https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999 where a woman in her 20s or 30s has a "retirement" party, because she's getting married, so has to leave the workforce - which could be compulsory or coerced. Then once it was realized that programming was more than a clerical task, women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were going to leave once they got married.
- ci5er 9y ago
  Hmmm. My formative adult years, at the beginning of my career, were spent in Japan, where every female was expected to get married and get out by the age of 28-or-so. I have no opinion or comment on whether that is good or bad for the Japanese men and women in their own society. But after that, I got to the US, and most of the women that I met in "my ranks" of career maturity were definitely very capable - and in it for the long haul. Which is to say: I've never seen the winnowing process up-close-and-personal. I'm guessing that something happens between the ages of 20 and 35? Or maybe less women join in the US in the first place? I don't know. But I think that if we are going to explore what's going on - we're going to have to go upstream of what most of these types of pieces are looking at... > Then once it was realized that programming was more than a clerical task, women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were going to leave once they got married. That's very interesting if it is true. I'll have to dig into this a bit. EDIT: I am a male, if that wasn't obvious.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Based on your comments, you are around 50 years old, and after growing up in the US spent about 1/3 of your adult life in (mostly) Japan. Figuring (50-18)/3 = 11 years, so you returned in the mid 1990s. The 1980s was the peak time for women entering professional software development, at least as measured by the percentage of women vs. men receiving a BS in computer science. It was 37% in 1984/1985, says https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/women-computer-science-grads--the-bump-before-the-decline.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wom... , while in 2010 it was 18%. Those women who graduated in 1985 at 22 are about 55 years old now. This puts them as slightly older than you, but close enough that they would still be part of "your ranks." I point this out because if you base things on your experience then you should realize that your experience comes from working with an unusual cohort. As you say, there is a US/UK difference. The speaker I pointed to said that the differences in gender expectations were stronger in the UK than in the US, and that part of those expectations was rooted in imperialism.
    - ci5er 9y ago

dominotw 9y ago

There has never been a better time to be a woman in the valley. My female family members have gotten a job everywhere they have interviewed, even at the top tier. There is no "pushing out" now, infact its the opposite, everyone from recruiter to the hiring managers have high level okr's and bonuses for finding and hiring women. Is it really necessary to dig out some skeletons and create some controversy where there is none.

eesmith 9y ago
I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time. (As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that historians stop what they are doing? I also don't understand what controversy you think is being created. We all knew that women were forced out of the field in the 1960s and 1970s, so that isn't controversial, and we know that the percentage of women in the computing industry is still not back to what it use to be. I didn't, however, know the details of why that happened. Hicks' recent talk for the Computer History Museum helped me understand just how strong the cultural reasons were in that era against women having managerial positions over men in that era, and how the presumption that women would leave once getting marriage collided with the increasing professionalization of the field to help get women kicked out. Even if times are great for women now, surely it's important to know some of the history of when it wasn't great? As an analogy, in school we learned about poor working and food safety conditions at the start of the Progressive Era, in order to understand the impact of muckrackers like Ida M. Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, and legal actions like the split-up of Standard Oil and creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act. If we don't know how things were, we don't understand why anti-trust and food protections laws are still on the books. That said, the WSJ article is pay-walled. The introduction makes me think it's to do with Hick's new book "Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing". It might instead cover something else, and I'm simply out of the loop.
- dominotw 9y ago
  >I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time. (As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that historians stop what they are doing? Quoting an analysis from the past, saying situation is still the same in top tech companies and implying that current situation is due to "men pushing women out" . He even quotes an internal google memo that says " women overall are biologically less suited to programming" as an example of men today bent on pushing women out. Hope you see the controversy part. Surely you can see this article is not purely historical curiosity and not at all like an article about history of food safety conditions.