In a recent talk that I gave at Stanford University, I discussed the changing role of women in the computing industry. The focus of the talk was a 1967 article in Cosmopolitan Magazine called “The Computer Girls”. An unusual source for a historian of computing, but one of my favorite and most useful. My particular favorite: a quote from the celebrated computer pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper comparing computer programming to following a recipe: “You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so it’s ready when you need it. Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail. Women are ‘naturals’ at computer programming.”
[Update: I published a chapter that discusses this material. See “Making Programming Masculine.”1Ensmenger, Nathan. 2010. “Making Programming Masculine.” In Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing. . Also, for a discussion of the ways in which my research on the Cosmo Girls has acquired a life of its own, see the post WHO STOLE THE COMPUTER GIRLS?
Follow- 1Ensmenger, Nathan. 2010. “Making Programming Masculine.” In Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing.
This may be true, but when I was in college for Computer Science, in all my computer classes, I had maybe five women in those classes. Tops.
It’s very hard to find women in IT. But of the ones I’ve met, they’ve all been very good!
I know this is an old post but I can’t help but notice that number of girls in computer science are gradually rising in Asia too, especially in Singapore. In NUS and NTU, I am seeing a lot more girls than before taking CS and Information System courses. A great thing, I reckon.
There was an interesting piece in the Economist recently about the exceptional number of tech entrepreneurs in the Arab world. Not quite the same thing as computer programmers, but a similar example of how the lack of an established culture and stereotype/expectations can lead to very different levels of participation.
http://goo.gl/rIauB
It’s very hard to find women in IT.