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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.
Year back - in the 1980s actually - I had a female boss in a math department in a college. Her take on things was this: You get fewer women in tech as overall job prospects for women increased. It has always been the case that we need brains in this field, and that nobody really cares what your gender is if you have brains. But women have a lot more job opportunities than they used to have, many of which pay better than cranking code. Personally I note A LOT more young female doctors than young male doctors these days, as an example. Also, this field has declined, a lot, in the >30 years I have been in it. It used to be considered a job that required professionalism and brains - and now it's considered car mechanics with keyboards. Frankly, being a diesel mechanic pays north of 80K and it's probably more fun.