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Computing was originally seen as clerical work, and it was one of the few acceptable career paths to women even before the social upheaval of the '60s. What ch

Computing was originally seen as clerical work, and it was one of the few acceptable career paths to women even before the social upheaval of the '60s. What changed was when home computers became widely available, causing society as a whole to redefine how they saw computing. Marketing campaign after marketing campaign promoted computers as a boys' hobby, with consumer software being dominated by games centered around playing sports and shooting things, and nearly all ads for those games showed them being played by boys. Rather than a clerical field, computers were now the latest expensive toys for boys. Computing was presented as "the cool new thing" to boys, and since marketing campaigns targeted boys pretty much exclusively, it gave girls the impression computing was a boys' club where girls weren't welcome. And since girls didn't feel welcome, they got out. The tipping point of this was in 1984, when the number of Computer Science degrees awarded to women peaked and then sharply fell off; it was so bad, the number didn't flatline until the very late '00s. There have been a few articles on the phenomenon: * https://www.engadget.com/2014-10-20-what-happened-to-all-of-the-women-coders-in-1984.html https://www.engadget.com/2014-10-20-what-happened-to-all-of-... * https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2875/why-did-the-percentage-of-cs-bachelors-degrees-going-to-women-peak-in-1984 https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2875/why-did... * https://www.codefellows.org/blog/1984-year-women-left-coding/ https://www.codefellows.org/blog/1984-year-women-left-coding...

divbzero 4y ago
Another article on the same phenomenon: * https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...
FartyMcFarter 4y ago
> Computing was originally seen as clerical work, Because it largely was. What people originally called "computers" were actually people doing manual calculations: https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa During the world wars in the 20th century, most of those "computers" were women since men were more directly involved in the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)#Wartime_computing_and_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)#Wartime_... > As electrical computers became more available, human computers, especially women, were drafted as some of the first computer programmers.[47] Because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC (the first general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II) were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women, namely: Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.[48]
- ilaksh 4y ago
  My mother was a computer in a bank for a period of time.
sizzzzlerz 4y ago
Not only seen as clerical, the women who did the work were collectively known as "computers". These computers filled vital roles during both world wars, being tasked with computing the trajectories of shells fired from cannons in the first to working with the mathematicians of Bletchley Park, in England, with solving the decryption of the German Enigma machine. Even as late as the 1960s, women, primarily black women, were employed by NASA to perform a variety of complex and utterly essential calculations that predicted where the rockets were to go during the manned space program. It's really only been within the last 20 years are so that they have achieved the recognition and acclaim they most assuredly earned.
userbinator 4y ago
Marketing campaign after marketing campaign promoted computers as a boys' hobby I don't think so, at least in the early years of personal computing; look at these 80s computer ads and see how many females are in them: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/retro-computer-ads-from-1980s/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/retro-computer-ads-from-198...

divbzero 4y ago

Another article on the same phenomenon: * https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-result-of-computer-game-marketing-20-years-ago https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...

FartyMcFarter 4y ago

> Computing was originally seen as clerical work, Because it largely was. What people originally called "computers" were actually people doing manual calculations: https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa https://www.history.com/news/human-computers-women-at-nasa During the world wars in the 20th century, most of those "computers" were women since men were more directly involved in the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)#Wartime_computing_and_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)#Wartime_... > As electrical computers became more available, human computers, especially women, were drafted as some of the first computer programmers.[47] Because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC (the first general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II) were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women, namely: Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.[48]

ilaksh 4y ago
My mother was a computer in a bank for a period of time.

sizzzzlerz 4y ago

Not only seen as clerical, the women who did the work were collectively known as "computers". These computers filled vital roles during both world wars, being tasked with computing the trajectories of shells fired from cannons in the first to working with the mathematicians of Bletchley Park, in England, with solving the decryption of the German Enigma machine. Even as late as the 1960s, women, primarily black women, were employed by NASA to perform a variety of complex and utterly essential calculations that predicted where the rockets were to go during the manned space program. It's really only been within the last 20 years are so that they have achieved the recognition and acclaim they most assuredly earned.

userbinator 4y ago

Marketing campaign after marketing campaign promoted computers as a boys' hobby I don't think so, at least in the early years of personal computing; look at these 80s computer ads and see how many females are in them: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/retro-computer-ads-from-1980s/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/retro-computer-ads-from-198...