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the 1st professional programmer I knew was a woman who did COBOL for a bank its struck me as interesting ever since. because over the course of my life and car

the 1st professional programmer I knew was a woman who did COBOL for a bank its struck me as interesting ever since. because over the course of my life and career since its seemed that 99%+ of the programmers I knew of were male. I don't think there is any one right/ideal breakdown by gender, so I just like to have best sense for facts on the ground

dan-robertson 3y ago
I think one thing is that the programmer job somewhat evolved from data entry and clerical roles that employed plenty of women already. So in some sense it didn’t start as a ‘man’s job’. For slightly later generations of programmers, one can observe that computer science degrees peaked near 40% female in the mid ’80s in the US[1]. It’s closer to 20% now and there are much more graduates today so you should probably expect a proportion somewhere around 20% of working CS grads. That number doesn’t seem crazily unrealistic to me for working programmers, though obviously it varies between companies. <1% does seem unrealistic to me. I’m slightly surprised that that’s been your experience (I assume you aren’t exaggerating because you want a sense for facts on the ground). [1] eg https://www.gcu.edu/blog/gcu-experience/analysis-women-computing https://www.gcu.edu/blog/gcu-experience/analysis-women-compu...
- pflanze 3y ago
  > that the programmer job somewhat evolved from data entry and clerical roles that employed plenty of women already This reminds me of a presentation[1] that showed pictures on how early computers were advertised and what roles programmers (women) took in the advertisements, which echoes your statement. (For context, see response to a comment of mine here[2]; more[3] info[4]) [1] https://youtu.be/5zN83hvn68U https://youtu.be/5zN83hvn68U [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411221 [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5l#playt=0h10m07s https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5l#playt=0h10m07s [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20190713175933/https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-97/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190713175933/https://datasocie...

dan-robertson 3y ago

I think one thing is that the programmer job somewhat evolved from data entry and clerical roles that employed plenty of women already. So in some sense it didn’t start as a ‘man’s job’. For slightly later generations of programmers, one can observe that computer science degrees peaked near 40% female in the mid ’80s in the US[1]. It’s closer to 20% now and there are much more graduates today so you should probably expect a proportion somewhere around 20% of working CS grads. That number doesn’t seem crazily unrealistic to me for working programmers, though obviously it varies between companies. <1% does seem unrealistic to me. I’m slightly surprised that that’s been your experience (I assume you aren’t exaggerating because you want a sense for facts on the ground). [1] eg https://www.gcu.edu/blog/gcu-experience/analysis-women-computing https://www.gcu.edu/blog/gcu-experience/analysis-women-compu...

pflanze 3y ago
> that the programmer job somewhat evolved from data entry and clerical roles that employed plenty of women already This reminds me of a presentation[1] that showed pictures on how early computers were advertised and what roles programmers (women) took in the advertisements, which echoes your statement. (For context, see response to a comment of mine here[2]; more[3] info[4]) [1] https://youtu.be/5zN83hvn68U https://youtu.be/5zN83hvn68U [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37411221 [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5l#playt=0h10m07s https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5l#playt=0h10m07s [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20190713175933/https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-97/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190713175933/https://datasocie...