Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
astounding to modern sensibilities. In the decades since the “ENIAC
girls” became the world's fi rst computer programmers, the computer
professions have become stereotypically masculine, and female enroll-
ments in computer science programs have been declining since the mid-
1980s. Participation rates for women in the computing fi elds are a
perennial problem for the industry, and this has been the subject of much
study and debate for the past several decades.
It was not always thus. As we have seen, women played an early and
important role in the history of computing. Some of them became quite
infl uential: in addition to Grace Hopper, Betty Snyder Holberton, Jean
Sammet, and Beatrice Helen Worsley, among others, rose to positions
of considerable prominence in the early computing industry.
45
In fact, as
I have pointed out elsewhere, compared to most technical professions,
computer programming remained unusually open to females throughout
the 1950s and 1960s. However, during this same period the computer
programming community was also actively pursuing a strategy of profes-
sional development that would eventually make it one of the most ste-
reotypically male professions, inhospitable to most women.
46
Contemporary estimates suggest that throughout the 1960s at least
thirty percent of working computer programmers were women. One
study puts the fi gure closer to fi fty percent.
47
When the fi rst offi cial gov-
ernment statistics were calculated in 1970, twenty-three percent of pro-
grammers were identifi ed as female—and this is during a period of
intense contraction in the programmer labor market.
48
The term “pro-
gramming” often encompassed a multitude of occupational categories,
including high-status jobs such as systems analyst and lead programmer
as well as low-status jobs like coder; women tended to (or were forced
to) congregate in the lower end of the occupational pool. Nevertheless,
there is ample evidence women were unusually welcome within the
computing professions well into the late 1960s.
One explanation for the larger numbers of women in computing
in this period was the intense shortage of available labor. In an employ-
ment market desperate for even moderately skilled computer workers, it
would have been counterproductive to discriminate against women. The
reliance on aptitude testing and internal promotion during this period
meant that women were at least as likely to be selected as programmer
trainees as men. Many fi rms tested all of their employees for program-
ming aptitude, so even women working in such highly feminized
(and low-status) occupations as stenography had a chance to become
programmers.
