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The predominance of women in the pictures is very striking. Was that common at the time? If so, I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily.

by shykes 16y ago

sethg 16y ago
Maybe “computer operator” was considered a secretarial role? Note that once upon a time a “computer” was a person who did computations, often a woman with a BA in math. ENIAC’s programmers were women (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/eniac.html http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/eniac.html).
dandrews 16y ago
Depended on the institution, but in general males were predominant in management and programmer positions. Operators were split about 50/50 at the places I worked, and I never met a male keypuncher. I/O control staff (who gathered input data, scheduled batch jobs to run, and distributed printed output) were mostly women. If you were male, you wore a tie. Those of us kids who didn't know how to tie one (or who operated drum printers and high-speed decollators) were forgiven for wearing clip-ons. I worked one place where men were required to wear ties, and the women all wore a uniform dress.
larrywright 16y ago
I seem to recall reading somewhere that at the time, it was mostly women who could touch type. This was the days of secretarial pools, most of those women were probably at around 100 wpm.
dpritchett 16y ago
I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily. Fran Allen says in her interview for Coders at Work that IBM's gender balance slowly shifted in the 60s as a side-effect of new IT hiring standards. Recruiting preference was given to candidates with advanced degrees in engineering, and most of these new graduates were male [1]. Through this lens the gender shift can be seen as an artifact of the higher education system: Fewer women were getting into these schools and finishing with advanced degrees in math and computing. Even today women can have a tougher road putting together the 7-10 consecutive years of full-time academics required for a terminal degree given that the 20s are also prime child-bearing years. pg explains the corporate hiring mindset better than I can with a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" analogy in News from the Front: A recruiter at a big company is in much the same position as someone buying technology for one. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And a safe bet is enough. No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down [2]. [1] http://www.codersatwork.com http://www.codersatwork.com [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

The predominance of women in the pictures is very striking. Was that common at the time? If so, I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily.

by shykes 16y ago

The predominance of women in the pictures is very striking. Was that common at the time? If so, I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily.

sethg 16y ago

Maybe “computer operator” was considered a secretarial role? Note that once upon a time a “computer” was a person who did computations, often a woman with a BA in math. ENIAC’s programmers were women (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/eniac.html http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/eniac.html).

dandrews 16y ago

Depended on the institution, but in general males were predominant in management and programmer positions. Operators were split about 50/50 at the places I worked, and I never met a male keypuncher. I/O control staff (who gathered input data, scheduled batch jobs to run, and distributed printed output) were mostly women. If you were male, you wore a tie. Those of us kids who didn't know how to tie one (or who operated drum printers and high-speed decollators) were forgiven for wearing clip-ons. I worked one place where men were required to wear ties, and the women all wore a uniform dress.

larrywright 16y ago

I seem to recall reading somewhere that at the time, it was mostly women who could touch type. This was the days of secretarial pools, most of those women were probably at around 100 wpm.

dpritchett 16y ago

I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily. Fran Allen says in her interview for Coders at Work that IBM's gender balance slowly shifted in the 60s as a side-effect of new IT hiring standards. Recruiting preference was given to candidates with advanced degrees in engineering, and most of these new graduates were male [1]. Through this lens the gender shift can be seen as an artifact of the higher education system: Fewer women were getting into these schools and finishing with advanced degrees in math and computing. Even today women can have a tougher road putting together the 7-10 consecutive years of full-time academics required for a terminal degree given that the 20s are also prime child-bearing years. pg explains the corporate hiring mindset better than I can with a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" analogy in News from the Front: A recruiter at a big company is in much the same position as someone buying technology for one. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And a safe bet is enough. No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down [2]. [1] http://www.codersatwork.com http://www.codersatwork.com [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html