Sexual Harassment In Tech Is As Old As the Computer Age (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Historian Marie Hicks, speaking at the Computer History Museum talks about how women computer operators and programmers were driven out of the industry, gives examples of sexual harassment dating back to the days of the Colossus era, and previews her next research. "It's all a matter of power, Hicks pointed out -- and women have never had their share of it," reports IEEE Spectrum. "Women dominated computer programming in its early days because the field wasn't seen as a career, just a something someone could do without a lot of training and would do for only a short period of time. Computer jobs had no room for advancement, so having women 'retire' in their 20s was not seen as a bad thing. And since women, of course, could never supervise men, Hicks said, women who were good at computing ended up training the men who ended up as their managers. But when it became clear that computers -- and computer work -- were important, women were suddenly pushed out of the field."

Hicks has also started looking at the bias baked into algorithms, specifically at when it first crossed from human to computer. The first example she turned up had "something to do with transgender people and the government's main pension computer." She says that when humans were in the loop, petitions to change gender on national insurance cards generally went through, but when the computer came in, the system was "specifically designed to no longer accommodate them, instead, to literally cause an error code to kick out of the processing chain any account of a 'known transsexual.'"

Comments

Nothing changed but the language

[Zero__Kelvin]

When you redefine sexual harassment as any unwanted attempt to connect then sexual harassment is quite common indeed, and I have been sexually harassed by a number of women as well by that definition.

Re: Nothing changed but the language

[Zero__Kelvin]

Nobody is saying that Trump is great and I can grab pussies with impunity now because a few women are vocal about their sexual repression. Trump and Moore were sick well before all this, and those of us who are well will continue to show respect while simultaneously appreciating the female form. Anyone who uses this as an excuse to justify bad behavior is doing exactly that ... seeking to justify bad behavior they were going to exhibit either way.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[jellomizer]

It is more complex then that.
Sexual harassment is about using your gender as a way to to pull power from someone else of a different gender.
It isn’t about just trying to connect to a person.
It’s a statement of I am so powerful that I can do things to you and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it.

There isn’t a well defined line but a gray area where things can be considered differently.
Normally the rule of thumb is if you have the authority to make someone’s life difficult from retribution of your advances then you are in the gray area. Hence why a lot of people with good guy reputations have been called out recently. Because who are they going to believe?

As a straight male, it is sometimes tough if there is an attractive woman that you are working with, but it is important to keep your professional and personal life separate and not use your authority as a driver.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[jellomizer]

If you are too stupid to know when you are getting in the gray zone where harassment could be considered then you really should stay out of society. Just because that woman is friendly doesn’t mean there is anything more from it. It isn’t like in the work environment we are hugging and touching the other guys or rating their sexual assets. We can focus on work. We can have friendly relations with employees without crossing that line.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[swb]

Ah yes, the attempt to downplay and dismiss the concerns of sexual harassment. After all, if they are at fault, then who even needs to worry about any of their complaints?

It's not that any of the headline-grabbing complaints of sexual harassment aren't all legitimate harassment if they're true as described.

But it does seem like there are a lot of women who make a big deal about "being looked at" or other similar non-contact/non-verbal behavior as some kind of harassment. I don't think that challenging "being looked at" as an arbitrary and excessive definition of harassment is the same as denying sexual harassment exists.

Humans are sexual animals and reproduction is principal drive. Mate selection is driven significantly by visually identifiable physical attributes -- hips, bust, and so on, for example. It's just not realistic to expect that the human reproduction system is going to be switched off like a light switch.

In some ways, women are right -- certain "looks" by men really do amount to a kind of instinctive evaluation of women's suitability as a reproductive partner, but much of this isn't really anything remotely like a conscious choice to harass a woman. A lot of it is a reflexive response to a physical stimulus, such as the prominence and definition of breasts and hips/bottom in a woman's dress.

I realize this can be framed as "blaming women for how they dress" but in some ways that's exactly what it boils down to. Women's fashions aren't designed by women looking to minimize male reproductive instincts, they're designed by people who often look to maximize women's body characteristics, including busts and hips. Ask yourself why so many lesbians dress "like men" -- there maybe some kind of political choice in wanting to look like a mechanic, but there's definitely an aspect where they are explicitly choosing not to define their appearance in terms of reproductive appeal.

And the issue is further blurred by a certain narcissism inherent in many women -- they *want* to "look pretty", aka be visually appealing. I mean, if you're trying to be visually appealing and you choose the apparel that does so by highlighting your physical attributes which also highlight your reproductive advantages, why exactly were you expecting a man to never look at you in any way that suggested they recognized those same physical attributes?

I shouldn't have to end this little screed with this, but I will for the reactionaries anyway -- NONE of this justifies coercive or any kind of unwanted physical contact. I am ONLY explaining and critiquing the common and fairly narrow cases of women who complain that "being looked at" is a kind of harassment.

Re: Nothing changed but the language

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, there's no evidence that Trump or Moore ever did the things they've been accused of. You've fallen for fake news.

Thank you komrade, your attempt at deflection has been noted and you can go away now.

PGOTUS confessed. We have it on tape. We've all heard it and BillyBob Bush has confirmed its authenticity.

As far as Moore is concerned, IMO where there's smoke, there's fire. By your standard, there's no evidence that Franken did any of the things he has been accused of either. But we'll wait for the trials just the same.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[lucm]

We can have friendly relations with employees without crossing that line.

Unfortunately that's no longer for you to decide where the line is. Most people know that pulling out your dick in front of your intern is unacceptable, but what about touching the bare skin on the back when you take a group selfie? or what about complimenting a coworker on their outfit? or what about walking around in your bathing suit at a company pool party? It depends.

Just like male teachers cannot afford to be alone with a student (female or not), it has become somewhat a gamble to be alone with a female coworker. It's even now risky to have sex with someone you met in a bar while both are drunks, because consent is becoming subjective.

What's left? Only meet women while witnesses you both trust are present, only engage in relationships under a clear contract, and never drink. Looks like ISIS is onto something.

Re: Nothing changed but the language

[BronsCon]

And if the man does it 10 times a week, to a different woman each time, it's 10 single incidents.
And if the woman gets 10 unwanted comments a week, from a different man each time, its 10 single incidents.

Correct, though I know that was just a lame attempt at reductio ad absurdum. If a woman isn't interested in one man, that's no indication that she's not interested in another. What you wrote works in the other direction, as well. Yes, women can (and do) harass men; and men do, in fact, get hit on at school and in the workplace.

Going back a few years, to 1999, I was being harassed nearly daily by a girl at school. Every day during lunch she would make advances in front of over a dozen other kids sitting at our table and every day I would make it clear I had no interest. After a couple months of this, she decided she would get back at me for rejecting her by flipping it around and claiming I had harassed her. It did not go well for me; and the experience has made it difficult for me to take a woman's claim of harassment at face value. Yes it happens, yes it's awful, but underhanded shit like what happened to me also happens. In the end, there was justice and it went much worse for her, but it's still not an experience anyone should ever have.

Basically, what happened is that I was called into the office and there was the principal, counselor, and a cop waiting for me. They read through a list of things she had said to me (that she claimed I had said to her -- and some of them were very obviously said by her as they were things a girl might do to a boy or might ask a boy do to do her, worded as the girl would have said them) and asked what I had to say about it. My response was to ask for a pen and paper, telling them I had a written statement to offer. I then wrote the names of everyone who sat at the same lunch table as us on a regular basis, handed it to them, and told them those people would be able to back up her story if it was true.

Wording it that way was my only mistake, as they took it as an admission of guilt and suspended me. Home life was, let's just say, not good during the following 3 days before they decided they should maybe actually interview some of the kids on my list. They interviewed a total of three before they had heard enough; one of those three was a nerdy little shit (who I'd never really paid attention to by then, but who later became one of my best friends) who carried a tape recorder around and had a habit of recording things for no particular reason. He, of course, recorded lunches, which meant he recorded what actually happened, proof that she was the one who said the things she claimed I had said, and proof that I had tried to put a stop to it.

In the end, I got a shitty apology from the school that did nothing to make up for the trauma I suffered at home (not the girl's fault, I blame my father for his reaction) but she got expelled. Not for the harassment, mind you, but for the false claim.

And that's how it should be, really; the punishment for falsely claiming someone harmed you should be much worse than the punishment for what you're claiming. And I mean provably false, as in there is some actual proof that things didn't happen the way it is claimed they happened; of course, the accused simply being found innocent shouldn't be enough to trigger false charges prosecution. Presumption of innocence and all that, you know?

And if 10 men do it, and 1 woman does it, that means it's okay for everyone to do it.

Now this is a fine example of reductio ad absurdum against "whataboutism", good for you. I mean, you think you're arguing against natural and respectful interaction between males and females, wherein one backs down when it is made clear the other has no interest in them, but whataboutism is wrong and needs to be put to an end, so thank you for arguing against it, even if you think you're doing something else.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[Solandri]

If you are too stupid to know when you are getting in the gray zone where harassment could be considered then you really should stay out of society. Just because that woman is friendly doesnâ(TM)t mean there is anything more from it.

Just because that woman is friendly doesn't mean there isn't anything more to it either. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a lot of cases where it's considered OK if a woman wants the attention, harassment if she doesn't. You cannot define what is/isn't OK based on how someone's reaction after the event has been precipitated.

Certain things, mostly involving touching, are obviously crossing the line. But when it comes to non-physical behavior, the rules need to be clearly set beforehand and on both sides. That is, not only do the rules need to define what is sexual harassment, they also need to define what isn't sexual harassment. What am I allowed to do and be assured I will not be accused of sexual harassment? I don't see the latter being done; and in fact I frequently see sexual harassment literature state that anything could be considered harassment if it's unwanted attention (i.e. definition based on someone's reaction after the fact). Well, if you define harassment that way, the only option if you want to be completely safe from harassment charges is to avoid interacting with women at all. Which means excluding them from your work. Except then you're be raked across the coals for discriminating against women.

The rules as they currently exist in some places are set up so it's impossible to comply with them.

It isnâ(TM)t like in the work environment we are hugging and touching the other guys or rating their sexual assets.

Well duh. Two men having sexual relations doesn't propagate the species. It's not done because it's not necessary for the survival of the human race.

Men and women having sexual relations is necessary for the survival of the human race. Consequently, some form of sexual communication (be it innuendo, or just asking for a date) is required. You cannot retroactively define that as being sexual harassment if it turns out the woman isn't interested in a date. To do so is to orchestrate the end of the human race.

The fundamental problem here is that it's traditionally the man's role to make the first move - to be the one who makes his interest known to the woman. If all women would agree to dump that tradition, then there would be no problem. The introductory behavior between men and women would be symmetrical, and we could set down a clear set of rules of what is and isn't acceptable behavior. Unfortunately, a large fraction of women (maybe even a majority) want to keep with that tradition, and expect the man to be the one to make the first move. As long as that expectation exists, men will express their interest to women. And just by chance alone they will sometimes express their interest to women who aren't interested. You can't have one without the other. (Alternatively, you could just define verbally expressing one's interest the first time as not-sexual harassment. Then there's a clear avenue for men to express their interest without running afoul of harassment guidelines. And if the woman rejects him, then no more advances are to be made by the man.*)

And yes I know you're not supposed to enter a relationship with someone at work. While that's a nice guideline for avoiding lots of potential problems, the unfortunate reality is that it happens, and pretty often too based on the number of married couples I know who somehow met through their work.

* Likewise, a large number of the married couples I know are together because the man persisted even after the woman rejected his initial advances. i.e. He harassed her until she eventually grew to like him and ended up marrying him. There'

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[hey!]

What you say is absolutely true, but changing cultural norms also play a role in the "epidemic" behavior we're seeing.

I'm a horology geek, so I recently pulled up the movie Thunderball on Netflix to check out the exact details of the famous (among watch geeks) "Bond strap". Rather than search through the movie I decided to simply watch the whole thing. Now I grew up in the 60s, and I've seen this movie several times, but it's been maybe 30 years since the last time. Watching this time, all I could think was, "holy cow, Bond is rape-y."

The thing is it wasn't so long ago that unchaperoned young women were tacitly assumed to be looking for or at least open to sex. That assumption was never so strict here in the US as in places like Italy, which is why so many American women travelling there were surprised to be mobbed on the street by grabbing men. But even here every woman was taught by her mother never to be alone with a man, and if she did she had to be prepared to slap him, which was usually effective but sometimes a dangerous escalation.

The reason that Bond's behavior when he forces himself on his physiotherapist wasn't immediately perceived by audiences as reprehensible was because as a woman in a job that sometimes required working with men she'd have been perceived as fair game for aggressive sexual overtures when she was alone with one.

That doesn't work when half the women in the workforce are women. If every occasion a man and a woman had to work together was sexually charged it'd be chaos. So the norms (which were never very kind to working women) had to change. The thing is with change is that we're all in different places in that change depending on how old we are, where we live, and the kinds of organizations we've worked for.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[Cederic]

It isnâ(TM)t like in the work environment we are hugging and touching the other guys

Now that's just utter bollocks. I've been hugged by many men and women in the workplace, touched on the arms, back, shoulders and head by a lot and touched on the leg by a couple.

Physical contact in the workplace is commonplace, for men and women.

rating their sexual assets

I've sat with women discussing which man from the call centre they'd like a tumble with.
I've sat with a man that's been pointing out the male construction workers across the canal he'd like to fuck.

Sex is part of life, and it does happen in the workplace.

We can have friendly relations with employees without crossing that line.

Some people can't. I've been accused of sexual harassment for holding the door open for someone; I mentioned this a few years later and someone else said they'd been reported to HR for exactly the same thing. Some women are so fucking paranoid about harassment that basic courtesies are being misinterpreted.

If you are too stupid to know when you are getting in the gray zone where harassment could be considered then you really should stay out of society.

Given all that, no. Society should fucking well fix itself so that the grey zone gains some clarity, because right now it's a fucking mess that's impossible to navigate.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[Cederic]

- I never noticed how some women literally cowered in the corner of the elevator until I finished a rape and sexual assault class. A shock.

I have, I just didn't put it down to rape or sexual assault. I also tend to give them space and show courtesy, much as I would anybody else. If they're a paranoid muppet that fears me then there's not a lot I can do about that; they can take the stairs if it's that important to them.

- Some women in offices were deathly afraid of leaving work. They had men in their lives, exes etc., who would wait for them.

If only there were things they could do to address this. Get help from colleagues, their management, the police, others. Oh, wait..

Many a mistake made because the project was completed and the thrill of success lead to the lust for validation.

And many a marriage has been started during those late nights crunching to finish. Most of us just build friendships though.

Divorce has, among other things, left women in vulnerable positions, having children as a single parent can lead them to accept men they would not normally take into their lives

Which fuckwit told you that? Women have full control over which men they let into their lives. I meet a lot of single mothers and they're all very choosy, and many of them are very careful about their partners and their children. Hell, I had a three month relationship with one and never met her kids (which suited me just fine).

Meanwhile the fathers are frequently lacking contact with those kids while being forced to hand over vast sums of money to the mother. Divorce does not leave women in a vulnerable position at all, just check the fucking suicide rates and homelessness statistics post divorce by gender.

Divorce has also led some men to believe they have carte blanche to treat divorced women as their rightful prey.

That's possible but also hyperbolic. By 'some men' do you mean that more than three exist? Probably.

My experience is that divorced women are much the same as any other woman, and some of them are very sexually aggressive. Others are not.

Same for the powerful, irresponsible man. He is designed wrong. Fix the design, or leave it to those who can handle the danger.

You really don't believe in personally responsibility. First you're telling us that women have no control, now you're telling us men have no self-control. This is no help to anybody; a manager that will use their position to take sexual advantage of their workers is dangerous even if some of those workers are able to say no.

It shouldn't be tough if there is an attractive woman that you are working with... First, recognize it isn't about the woman being 'attractive'. It's about you being responsible, honest with yourself, and respectful. There is a way to engage a woman at work in a personal relationship, but it's difficult. And it should be. Relationships are difficult, and the effort must be balanced against the reward.

When the attractive woman sends you IMs telling you she wants to smother you with cuddles, it gets very fucking difficult. Especially when she's much more junior, you give her work to do and HR's guidance is, "It's all down to how this makes you feel"

That guidance is no fucking use at all when a response building a relationship could lead to being sacked for sexual harassment two hours later, but a failure to reply and respond would be reported to your manager as "doesn't support female members of staff".

I've been in that situation. It's a fucking minefield even if you aren't trying to start a relationship.

And, sir, you will not know if you've offended her even if you ask

Some women can't not be offended. I've worked with a couple, and the only response is to get the fuck out of there. They're toxic and they destroy teams.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are these stories of people being accused of sexual harassment by touching a coworkers bare shoulder during a group picture?

Garrison Keillor, the "Prairie Home Companion" guy, just got fired for the same amount of contact.

Key paragraph:

“I put my hand on a woman’s bare back,” he wrote. “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it.”

Thanks to feminism, women are now untouchables. No amount of empathy or emotional connection is permitted. You'll see more and more men adopt the "Pence rule" as the only way to avoid lawsuits.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[Mashiki]

Holy shit. Go work in corporate for a year or two, you'll see this everywhere. On the other side, if a women commits sexual harassment? You're likely still going to be working with her. And if your company really hates you for bringing up a women committing such, they're going to do their best to make sure you're both working early hours and alone. Oh that'll also happen at the behest of HR, which is 99.9% women.

Hell go work in a government office where it's all women, you think men are sexually aggressive? Please. Once they forget you're there, you'll hear the stories about how they're trying to commit pregnancy by deception, backstabbing against whoever, and so on. My own examples when I was working as a cadet for a police service, where I'd work bars, parades, and so on? I'd get groped by women 50-70 times a night. Male police officers keep track of this, but you're expected to brush it off and not make a scene. The constable I worked with was once groped 137 times by women in a 5hr shift in a club.

Oh and have you never ever in your entire life worked in a female dominated environment? HR? Short-line assembly? Accounting? Boy oh boy are you in for on hell of a lesson on the double standards that currently exist. Here's the thing with sexual harassment. If a women accuses a man, his life is effectively over. Full stop. That's it. Even if he's proven innocent in the court, even if the accuser retracts and says she lied, it doesn't matter. He will always have that stigma, he will be turned down for future education, jobs, friends and family will abandon him. The very worst cases? You see them all the time where the guy simply kills himself. There is near-to-zero punishment for false allegations by women against men. The times where there are punishments are when the women has committed dozens of fraudulent complaints, and she might, maybe, possibly get 2 years less a day--that means no federal time, which would be around 10 years for men.

Re:Nothing changed but the language

[squiggleslash]

Have you read or watched the news AT ALL in the last two months?

The common theme is not "Some woman made a complaint about something innocent and that ruined a man", it's "Some men harassed, and often assaulted, women, and sometimes men, over a period of decades, and HR assisted those men and covered it up."

Even if he's proven innocent in the court, even if the accuser retracts and says she lied, it doesn't matter. He will always have that stigma, he will be turned down for future education, jobs, friends and family will abandon him.

It virtually never goes to court. And until a few months ago, men could be pretty openly accused of virtually everything under the sun, and remain influential. The complaints against Roger Ailes, Keven Spacey, Bill O'Reilly and the yet to be touched director of certain X Men films, went on for decades, often leaking into the public, and nothing, NOTHING, was done.

Programming or operating ?

[religionofpeas]

Women dominated computer programming in its early days

Reading the articles about it, it sounds more like they dominated operating the machines, not designing the actual software (or hardware).

Re:Programming or operating ?

[religionofpeas]

Because many of them were just operators, therefore we should relegate all of them to the dustbin of history, right?

No, we should just refer to them as operators, not programmers.

There have been a lot of male operators too. Shall we apply the same standard for them?

Why not ? Are you a sexist ?

Re:Programming or operating ?

[hey!]

Well, I'm old enough to have met a number of these women, so I can clear a few things up.

First of all, in the very earliest electronic computers there wasn't really such a strong division between operating a computer and programming it. You had to rewire the computers for each new problem. Second, there wasn't always such a strong division between operations and programming even in stored program computers; that division was sharper in business data processing than it was in scientific and technical computing. Third, yes, there were lots and lots of women who absolutely were what we'd consider "programmers" today.

You have to understand a few things. First, computers really took off in WW2, and a shortage of men on the homefront opened up a lot of jobs for women. I knew a woman (passed away now) who got a degree in math from an Ivy League university; her expected career path was marriage, but instead she went to work programming on a number of early computers, from Harvard's Mark 1 (1944) through MIT's Whirlwind (early to mid 50s). However interesting these jobs were, they were always viewed as temporary. At first it was only until the soldier came back from the war, and then she was expected to marry at any time and retire. Since the pay was low and there were no other jobs for math geek women other than school teacher, that's what she ended up doing.

I remember as late as the late 70s there were still many data processing departments with almost entirely female staff and a male supervisor (i.e., no career advancement path). In the early 80s my wife was a member of the first class in her graduate school to be half female; yet the data processing department was staffed with young women who were expected to marry and retire. In addition to operations they did many of the programming tasks you'd give to a student these days, since back then even graduate students wouldn't have had much computer experience). The faculty called the information processing staff -- and I am NOT making this up -- "data dollies".

There was another path to programming that would be surprising to younger people. Most men before 1980 didn't know how to operate a keyboard. Rather than *learn* how, it was customary to hand off handwritten programs to a low-paid typist or (in the case of punch cards) a keypuncher, who was invariably a woman. Naturally the clever one figured this programming thing out, and in the 80s it was still common to meet women who'd learned programming this way. Their role in computing was largely as cheap temporary labor, but by then some of them were starting to be viewed as career women.

And when the wolf whistling stops

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

The feminists find they miss it because it means men either don't find them attractive anymore or are at least just flat out ignoring them.

I have to admit I don't see the connection with this one... Yeah, having people delude themselves and acting like assholes isn't harassment, it's being an asshole.

A normal man who flirts with a normal woman isn't being an asshole, even if he doesn't immediately stop. Plenty of women who end up in happy LTRs will laugh and say "his persistence is what got me" or something to that effect. Women usually don't respect men who obediently go away the moment she says "not interested."

Granted, there may be a cultural difference here. I'm a southerner working in a big metropolitan region in the south. I have never seen ANY of the sort of in-your-face behavior in our offices that one would believe is par for the course on the West Coast. So my assumption is normal flirting and push-pull, not "hey babe, wanna fuck in the bathroom?" to a female colleague.