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The First Women in Tech Didn't Leave -- Men Pushed Them Out (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A column on the Wall Street Journal argues that sexism in the tech industry is as old as the tech industry itself. At its genesis, computer programming faced a double stigma -- it was thought of as menial labor, like factory work, and it was feminized, a kind of "women's work" that wasn't considered intellectual (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). In the U.K., women in the government's low-paid "Machine Operator Class" performed knowledge work including programming systems for everything from tax collection and social services to code-breaking and scientific research. Later, they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married. Today, in the U.S., about a quarter of computing and mathematics jobs are held by women, and that proportion has been declining over the past 20 years. A string of recent events suggest the steps currently being taken by tech firms to address these issues are inadequate.
Yes you are correct. Plenty of women tech workers at my place of work and no shortage. What you are seeing is more fake news out there buy the liberal left. They always need a victim to make a story.
There is no evidence for women or minorities being paid less for the same work.
No evidence. It's just a rumor.
In fact the evidence contradicts the rumor. Just google "pay gap myth" and please never open your stupid mouth again.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
There's nothing like when a "generation removed" tries to teach a lesson to the people that lived it. It sends the wrong message to the generations that follow.
Most women thought, and openly expressed, openly mocked, computer use as being the domain of the nerd. As someone that actively encouraged women to become more involved I can say that the predominant attitude by them was that "computers are for nerds".
Men didn't make it too inviting, however that wasn't their responsibility. It wasn't their purview.
Granted men did create a highly competitive environment and this was filled with intimidation because the work was intimidating. It was. If someone wasn't able to embrace that they obviously wouldn't stick around, male or female. I'm sure the atmosphere created by this was intimidating to the point of being viewed as hostile by some. This intimidation didn't keep men from pursuing their goals.
I remember playing darts with a friend who was into computers. We were talking about Macintosh vs. DOS. I asked him how he got involved. He talked about his brother that worked for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He told me that he was writing drivers for some hardware component for the Macintosh. He told me his brother had taken some "obscure math" class in college and that ILM was looking for anyone that had that knowledge. This was when I lived in the heart of Silicon Valley so I had no reason to disbelieve his story.
Back in the early tech days competition was heavy and hard. People would enter and leave in droves. They'd enter because it was a new skills market and they'd leave as they failed to achieve or they burned out. I noted back then that so many left yet I stuck it out -- I didn't seem to burn out.
Learning technology is a very personal thing. I mean most of those that stayed with it were people that spent their nights and weekends learning everything they could. Their job didn't stop at the close of business. If you wanted to learn a new programming language -- the up and coming new one such as C or C++ or C# -- you traditionally built on your prior knowledge. It took months if not years to learn these languages adequately, and that didn't always happen by going back to school. In fact, I'd venture a say that it rarely happened that way. I can't say what occurred at the level of the executives, but I can say that it wasn't likely that anyone was going to achieve the level of executive unless they had an intense indepth of knowledge in the field.
If you weren't into software then you were into hardware and if you weren't into hardware or software you were into support. It took years to learn to design hardware, and that most often required a degree in electrical engineering and/or math. So, if you weren't going for a degree to develop computer hardware and you weren't developing software then you were supporting infrastructure and/or the users. That took a broad understanding of multiple areas. You needed to know how the hardware basically functioned and you needed to know how software was supposed to work more than you needed to know how a specific piece of software/program worked. For instance, you needed to know the idea behind word processing versus knowing a specific word processor. You needed to be able to look at a piece of software that you'd never seen before and know why it broke -- and you did know because you knew how software was supposed to work. None of these skills came over night. You needed to thoroughly indoctrinate yourself and you needed to be around others that didn't mislead you, around people that also knew their stuff, and if you couldn't put up with the competition you were shunned. If someone was able to deal with that then whether they were a man or a woman didn't matter.
I do remember many times where I heard a complaint that such and such wouldn't teach such and such a person. When asking about it I'd get a response that that person just didn't get it or took too much time away from what they were do
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
To answer your question, they were typing the text of programs in languages like COBOL, which weren't quite the machine-oriented gibberish you use to program a calculator. A program might look like this:
Begin.
SORT WorkFile ON ASCENDING KEY WStudentName
INPUT PROCEDURE IS GetMaleStudents
GIVING MaleStudentFile.
STOP RUN.
...
If you spent all day every day for a couple of months you'd have a pretty good intuitive grasp of the syntax rules of the language; and if you were of the right mentality it wouldn't be that hard to turn you into a programmer.
Compare the above to a calculator listing:
.3 STO .3 .1 STO .1 .0 STO .0 .2 STO .2
001- 42,21,11 f LBL A
002- 43 8 g RAD
003- 42 3 f !RAD
004- 44
005- 33 R#
006- 44
007- 33 R#
008- 44
009- 33 R#
010- 44
...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bullying is a factor.
You mean by women. Back in the 1980's and 90's there was a large coordinated push by feminists to push men out of both areas. In both cases it was some mantra of the "he's male thus a rapist." There's no social pressure against being a teacher or nurse, there is a big social pressure not to go in it because of the perceived problems relating to working with women.
Again, look in your own damn backyard. And you'll find plenty of stories of men run out of the teaching profession especially k-12, on claims of sexual harassment that turn out to not be true or have their lies completely ruined by false accusations. On the other hand, there's plenty of female sexual predators who get slaps on the wrist for hooking up with a 14yr old boy or girl.
Om, nomnomnom...