> So how did we lose the women in computing? They did not just leave; they were pushed out. The problem is how we define "computing" in the first place. The m

> So how did we lose the women in computing? They did not just leave; they were pushed out. The problem is how we define "computing" in the first place. The movie "hidden figures" [0] comes to mind. The three main characters are all "women in computing" and work as "computers"... meaning they perform computations manually [1] alongside other female computers (the term used at the time). Computers before the 80's required a lot of support staff to operate. Programmers and Engineers didn't directly interact with the machine; typically programs were written on paper and then transcribed into punched cards by secretaries (who at some places would be referred to as "programmers" or "computer operators") and then organized to be batch processed. The results would then be retrieved once the computation actually happened as they tried maintaining the machines close to 100% usage. That's where most of the confusion stems from. These were all accounted as "computer related occupations" back in the 50's through 80's. The personal computers and minicomputers made most of these positions obsolete, since the engineers could simply use the machine interactively. But years after years people find this "collapse" of "women in computing" and interpret it as woman getting pushed out of engineering or proper programming positions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures [1] With the advent of the first numerical computers, they eventually learn programming, but it is implied that the human computers won't be needed once the machine can be directly programmed by them or the engineers.