Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
inclined males, and therefore antisocial, mathematically inclined males
were overrepresented in the programmer population; this in turn rein-
forced the popular perception that programmers
ought
to be antisocial
and mathematically inclined (and therefore male), and so on ad
infi nitum. Combined with the often-explicit association of programming
personnel with beards, sandals, and scruffi ness, it is no wonder that
women felt increasingly excluded from the center of the computing
community.
Finally, the explosion of unscrupulous vocational schools in this
period may also have contributed to the marginalization of women in
computing. Not only were these schools constructed deliberately on the
model of the older—and female-oriented—typing academies and busi-
ness colleges, but they also preyed specifi cally on those aspirants to the
programming professions who most lacked access to traditional occupa-
tional and fi nancial assets, such as those without technical educations,
college degrees, personal connections, or business experience. It was
frequently women who fell into this category. At the very least, by
sowing confusion in the programmer labor market through encouraging
false expectations, infl ating standards, and rigging aptitude tests, the
schools made it even more diffi cult for women and other unconventional
candidates to enter the profession.
This bias toward male programmers was not so much deliberate as it
was convenient—a combination of laziness, ambiguity, and traditional
male privilege. The fact that the use of lazy screening practices inadver-
tently excluded large numbers of potential
female
trainees was simply
never considered. But the increasing assumption that the average pro-
grammer was also male did play a key role in the establishment of a
highly masculine programming subculture.
The Search for Solutions
Given that aptitude tests were perceived by many within the industry to
be inaccurate, irrelevant, and susceptible to widespread cheating, why
did so many employers continue to make extensive use of them well into
the 1980s? The most obvious reason is that they had few other options.
The rapid expansion of the commercial computer industry in the early
1960s demanded the recruitment of large armies of new professional
programmers. At the same time, the increasing diversity and complexity
of software systems in this period—driven in large part by the shift
in focus from scientifi c to business computing—meant that traditional
