(ix) Linda Shafer: Foreword

"There were the pros and cons of being female in the computing field then, just as there are now. The disadvantages still exist, but they have morphed into different ones and are shifting the workforce culture in an unhealthy direction that threatens the future of a profession that still needs diverse participation and input to support our undisputed computer-reliant life.
In this book, the chapters provide a fresh and constructive look at potential reasons for the growing imbalance in gender, exploring the different reasons for the evolution of a profession that has become as male coded as the computing profession now is. While the first wave of programmers and analysts worked in a relatively unsegregated environment, the current computer workforce (across all sectors, including government employees, small business owners, entrepreneurs, chip designers, space-race programmers, and game developers) has become ordered and structured as primarily male."(xi)

(xiii) Thomas Misa: Preface

"The exploration of gender and computing history was long overdue. After all, there must be something in the many hundreds of photographs we’d seen over the years showing 'white guys with computers'."(xiii)

(1) Part I - Tools for understanding

(3) 1 - Thomas Misa: Gender Codes - Defining the Problem

"Women have passionately programmed computers for many decades. Ada Lovelace wrote abstract programs for calculating Bernoulli numbers on Charles Babbage's mechanical computer, and six women mathematicians, known as human 'computers', created working programs for the ENIAC computer during the Second World War. In the 1950s the pioneering generation of computer science featured a surprising number of prominent women who led research teams, defined computer languages, and even pioneered the history of computing. The annual Grace Hopper celebration, named for the most prominent of these pioneering women computer scientists, offers "a four-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront". More recently, Elizabeth 'Jake' Feinler defined the top-level domain names - .com, .gov, .org - for the Internet. In 2006, Fran Allen, already the first female IBM Fellow, was the first woman to win the prestigious Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, for her work in optimizing computer code. Two years later, Barbara Liskov was awarded the Turing Award for her foundational work on programming languages. The list of notable women in computing is sizable and expanding. It's strange anyone would think that women don't like computing."(3)

De participatie van vrouwen is de laatste decennia op allerlei maatschappelijke en academische terreinen toegenomen, maar - na een flinke toename in de 1960-er en 1970-er jaren - merkwaardig genoeg uiteindelijk niet op het terrein van de computerwetenschappen en computertechniek.

"In the mid-1980s, while women flooded into computing education and from there into the computing workforce, there were proportionately more women in computing than anywhere else in the engineering world. (...) Despite these early successes, something unprecedented in the history of the professions hit computing in the mid-1980s: not merely did women stop entering computing in large numbers, but the proportion of women studying computing actually began falling - and it has continued to fall, steadily, all the way through to the present. No other professional field has ever experienced such a decline in the proportion of women in its ranks."(5)

"A pressing question that this book addresses, and for the first time with historical data and analysis, is how and when and why women's participation in computing fell so dramatically. This lopsided change in computing’s gender balance in the past two decades is entirely without historical precedent. Some of the technical professions appear historically to be resistant to women’s entry, such as surgery or civil engineering; yet no other profession has seen the upswing and downturn of women that is strikingly evident in computing."(6-7)

"In this book we present fresh evidence of women’s striking successes as computer scientists and as entrepreneurs in the computer services industry. This book also documents women’s exclusion from high-level computing positions and marginalization within the computing professions. These stories, too, give a more complete picture of the problem."(8)

"We believe it is no coincidence that the sea change in gender of the 1980s closely paralleled the emergence of male nerds in popular culture as well as the rise of distinctly gendered computer gaming, now a multibillion dollar industry (see below). All the same, the mass media’s amplified masculine image of computing is clearly a misleading one. Media images of computing are even less gender balanced than the actual practices of computing (see Chapter 12). Finally, this book frames the problem of gender and computing in international and comparative terms (Fig. 1.3). Much thinking about the gender gap so far has taken the United States to be the normative case. Certainly, in the global economy of today, any uniquely national perspective is increasingly irrelevant."(9)

Vervolgens wordt de inhoud van dit boek gepresenteerd via heldere samenvattingen van de verschillende hoofdstukken.

(25) 2 - Caroline Hayes: Computer Science - The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Analyse van cijfers over de groei van de computerwetenschappen en de representatie van vrouwen daarin.

[Het zou goed zijn als auteurs meteen aangaven op welke regio de gebruikte datasets betrekking hebben. In dit hoofdstuk gaat het om cijfers uit de USA. Maar dat wordt niet nadrukkelijk gezegd aan het begin van het artikel.]

"The percentage of women has steadily increased over the last 40 years in almost all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. However, what is uniquely perplexing about computer science is that the proportion of women undergraduates has been steadily dropping for 20 years. This long-term drop in the proportion of women is counter to the trends in all other STEM disciplines, and the causes have largely been a mystery.
The primary aims of this chapter are to present data from national data sets on the representation of women in multiple STEM fields over time (1966–2006), so as to characterize the extent and depth of this phenomenon, and propose a possible explanation for the recent decline in the proportion of undergraduate women in computer science. Additionally, the chapter will outline continuing research questions important for better understanding the phenomenon, and discuss several approaches for change."(25)

Hoe kan die unieke daling van de deelname van vrouwen binnen computerwetenschappen dus verklaard worden? De oorzaak zit niet in het ontbreken van liefde voor wiskunde: de cijfers laten zien dat vrouwen vaak in wiskunde afstuderen. Ook de mannelijke dominantie is niet (alleen) verantwoordelijk, omdat die daling er niet is binnen andere typische mannenberoepen. Om een antwoord te krijgen is het noodzakelijk datasets van vroeger en nu te analyseren.

"There are several trends that appear to be common across practically all fields. First, the proportion of women has been steadily increasing for 40 or more years. Second, regardless of whether a field is male dominated or not, there are proportionately fewer women holding management and leadership positions relative to other positions. Third, women continue to be promoted more slowly and paid less, even at comparable levels of accomplishment. Thus, while the situation is changing for both men and women, equal numbers may not mean equal status."(28)

Het is m.a.w. niet voldoende alleen cijfers te gebruiken voor hoeveel vrouwen afstuderen in computerwetenschappen e.d. Even belangrijk is om te kijken wat er daarna gebeurde. Waar kwamen ze terecht? Met welke taken en status? Met welk inkomen? Met welke doorstroommogelijkheden?

"In fields where there are relatively few women, such as computer science and engineering, all of the challenges above can be exacerbated. Evaluation biases favoring men may be particularly strong in fields where there are few women. Evaluation bias is the tendency to judge people's talents more positively when they match the stereotype for a discipline; such biases can differentially impact the rates at which men and women are hired, retained, or promoted in male-dominated fields."(28)

Een andere belangrijke vraag is of de situatie van de computerwetenschappen zo uniek en anders is dan die van andere STEM-studies waardoor vrouwen er minder belangstelling voor hebben.

[Uit het vervolg blijkt dat Hayes dat unieke in de cijferpatronen zoekt. De opbouw van het artikel laat soms te wensen over. Er zit veel herhaling in, maar de antwoorden op de gestelde vragen willen maar niet komen.]

"When examined in the context of other STEM disciplines, computer science appears to be a field of extremes, being both the fastest growing and declining in different time periods with respect to representation of women. The deep decline that has continued over more than 20 years is an alarming trend distinct from any other STEM field examined, and it appears to be continuing still. Has this trend also occurred in the computing workforce, or is it isolated to undergraduate computer science education?"(32)

" Thus, it appears the computing workforce does indeed follow a pattern similar to that in undergraduate computer science education, particularly the professional segments (systems analysts and software developers)."(32)

"[1] Computer science appears unique among STEM fields during this time period in that it was a start-up that became sufficiently sizable and economically important to receive broad public attention. [2] The fluctuations occurring in computer science after 1986 are typical of many established fields."(38)

"The first point is important because one outcome of professionalization (the process of declaring oneself to be a discipline and formalization of training) is the emergence and solidification of internal and external (public) identities for the discipline. Internal identities reflect how people within a discipline see the discipline and themselves; public identities reflect how people outside a discipline view it and the people who work within it, and these two viewpoints are not always in alignment. Of particular concern in this discussion are the public identities that emerged for computer science as it grew, including public attitudes and the images and stereotypes of computer scientists, such as the geek and the hacker."(38)

Hierop komt ze later terug, omdat stereotypen inderdaad pas opkwamen toen de discipline bekend was geworden, dus na 1985.

"The second point is important because some have suggested that the drop in total computer science graduates after 1986 may have caused the drop in the representation of women in computer science. However, this does not seem likely since the fluctuations in computer science post-1986 are proportionately no bigger or smaller than those seen in other disciplines, yet the representation of women has been growing steadily in most other disciplines. The changing popularity of an established discipline appears to have little impact on the representation of women in that discipline."(39)

Er zijn verhoudingsgewijs niet opvallend minder vrouwen die een doctorgraad halen, in leidinggevende functies terecht komen dan wel op de hoogste trappen van de academische loopbaan (lectoren en professoren) in de computerwetenschappen.

"The current shrinking representation of women has primarily impacted undergraduate education and the computing workforce including programmers, systems analysts, and data processing and equipment repair. However, the proportions of women at higher levels - doctorates and faculty, have continued to grow overall."(44)

"Two hypotheses that may explain factors contributing to the shrinking percentage of women in computer science are the following:
--As the discipline of computer science became established and known to the general public during the 1970s and 1980s, unappealing stereotypes of computer scientists as nerds and hackers also became established in the general consciousness. These stereotypes were probably unappealing to both men and women, but disproportionally so to women.
--As computer science professionalized, computer science programs were established in a range of departments, such as mathematics, physics, or electrical engineering and housed in a variety of colleges ranging from liberal arts to physical sciences and engineering. Gradually these programs became independent computer science departments, which are now often located predominantly in engineering colleges. Thus, computer science likely started out with a wide variety of disciplinary cultural influences, and it has gradually moved closer to a culture reminiscent of engineering, with similar proportions of women.
One or both of these hypotheses may be true. Both are consistent with the numerical trends presented in this chapter, but both will require further investigation before it is possible to assess their likelihood. The next section outlines some possible future directions that may help to clarify the current downward trend in computer science, and how to rectify it in order to create a healthier climate for all."(44-45)

(51) 3 - Thomas Haigh: Masculinity and the Machine Man - Gender in the History of Data Processing

[Is ook weer voornamelijk gericht op de Amerikaanse situatie.]

"Historian David Noble has characterized science as "A World Without Women", arguing that this is a result of the patterning of universities on a medieval monastic model. While this phrase may describe academic computer science, it was never true of data processing, as the administrative use of computers and punched card machines was known until the 1980s. Corporate computing departments were full of women from the very beginning, but men and women were clustered in different occupations. My aim here is to explain why this occurred and how this sexual segregation has evolved over time."(51)

Kort gezegd: vrouwen deden het typewerk (maakt niet uit of het ponskaarten waren of de latere computerterminals) met weinig kansen op promotie, mannen deden de machines met betere kansen en stroomden door naar supervisie.

"This preference is an example of what labor historians call 'occupational sex typing'. One of the most relevant insights from the body of work on labor and gender is that the gender segregation of different kinds of work has usually been presented as based on the natural aptitudes of men and women. But closer analysis reveals that definitions of these aptitudes shift and that a particular activity can be described in different ways to emphasize characteristics associated with either sex."(53)

"The one big change with computerization was the addition of a new job: programming. The packaged application software business only started to develop during the 1970s, so almost all applications were written within user companies (sometimes with assistance from consulting firms or using sample code from manufacturers). Programming was constructed very differently in data processing from its conception in early scientific computing as a kind of routine mathematical labor. It was seen instead as a hybrid of aspects of the work previously carried out by operators and by systems analysts [en dat waren voornamelijk mannen]. Whereas instructions created by the analyst were previously interpreted directly by punched card machine operators, they now had to be translated into the enormously pedantic language of the computer before they could be given to computer operators. The programmer’s perceived job was to take detailed flow charts created by the analyst and turn them into program code. So in the transition from punched card work, some skill and control were transferred from the operator to the programmer."(54)

"So why were the (predominantly male) data processing supervisors so keen to keep women corralled in the keypunching side of the department? I argue that the intersection of two powerful social mechanisms, sex typing and status anxiety, gave ambitious data processing supervisors making the transition into the computer age a powerful motivation to ensure that women remained in their place."(55)

"The realities of the clerical labor market put pressure on punched card supervisors to maintain a firm gender divide between keypunch operation and other kinds of punched card work and to stress the masculine nature of their craft. If a rigid separation from keypunching was not preserved, then the masculine identity of punched card work could suffer a precipitous collapse.
Data processing supervisors were not content merely to defend the status quo. The arrival of the computer and the ever increasing importance of data processing promised ambitious men the chance to elevate their positions within the corporate hierarchy. They associated this with the embrace of a new, and more managerial, form of masculinity."(56)

"The need of ambitious data processing managers to distance themselves from the feminized world of office work is seen most clearly in depictions of keypunch women. Keypunch workers were most definitely not welcome as members of the National Machine Accountants Association. (...) Association with keypunch work remained a threat to masculinity into the 1960s and beyond. (...) This routine denigration of women resulted in some advertisements shocking to modern sensibilities. (...) Perceived ties to keypunch work sometimes delegitimized women from administrative programming work, turning the woman programmer into a freakish figure of fun."(60-61)

Met de opkomst van de vrouwenbeweging in de 1970-er jaren kwam ook de discussie op over seksisme en simpele vooronderstellingen over mannen en vrouwen. Maar in de praktijk veranderde er niet heel veel toen computers de ponskaartmachines begonnen te vervangen en 'key punchers' 'data typists' werden.

"More research is necessary to determine the extent to which the women's movement of the 1970s can explain the significant increase in women's work as data processing programmers and systems analysts over this decade."(63)

"The relative pay and prestige of data processing jobs remained constant over time. In increasing order of pay and prestige they ran: keypunch operator, computer / punched card machine operator, computer programmer, systems analyst, and manager / supervisor. The less well paid the job, the more likely it was to be filled by a woman."(64)

"While there were some shifts in data processing labor from the 1950s to the 1970s, the most striking finding is how little changed. Women were still concentrated in the lowest paid, lowest status jobs with the worst prospects for career advancement. But one key lesson from labor history is that it takes constant effort to keep things the way that they are. Stasis is equally in need of historical explanation as is change."(66)

"Since 1992, when a new set of occupational classifications was introduced, the overall number of women reported in computer-related occupations has been fairly constant at around 1.5 million, while the number of men has doubled to just under 3 million. This might suggest a stagnation for women’s career prospects in computing. But a closer look at the data presents a different and more encouraging picture. The number of women working as data-entry clerks and computer operators has dropped dramatically. This has been counterbalanced by a rapid increase in the number of women classified as systems analysts and computer managers."(66)

"The historical pattern of women's concentration in the least desirable computing jobs has been partially reversed. As one looks from programming to the higher status work of analyst or manager, women's representation actually increases."(67)

Wat nu dan met de onderrepresentatie van vrouwen in de computerwereld? Het probleem ligt conceptueel: er bestaat niet zoiets als 'het computerberoep' of 'de computerwereld'.

"While IT jobs all involve computers, their differences are more profound than their similarities. Each has its own gender dynamics. We see, for example, that women were always overrepresented in data-entry work but have now made up ground in systems analysis and computer management, while losing it in programming."(67)

"Recent years have seen an influx of women into well-paid professional fields such as law and medicine. Perhaps the failure of IT occupations to professionalize is more off-putting to women than men."(68)

"We should follow the advice of the late Mike Mahoney to look at the 'histories of computing(s)' rather than a single 'history of computing'. Thinking of computing as a single area of activity makes it hard to understand why women were inventing programming in the 1940s but made up only a small proportion of the corporate computing workforce a decade later. This situation looks very different if we conceptualize programming as a task carried out in many different social contexts, or in Mahoney’s terms, in multiple computings each with its own history."(68)

(73) Part II - Institutional Life

(75) 4 - Corinna Schlombs: A Gendered Job Carousel - Employment Effects of Computer Automation

[Noemt wel Duitsland, maar is in feite gericht op de Amerikaanse situatie.]

"Feminist historians of technology have shown that although new technologies such as electronic computers do indeed induce change, "the outcomes of the change are constrained by the pre-existing organization of work of which gender is an integral part" [3, p. 28]. The gender division in clerical work was established in the late 19th and early 20th century when punch-card machines and other mechanical data processing machines came into use. Late Victorian ideals about women as respectable housewives limited the professional goals women could aspire to and helped relegate them to low-paid, dead-end jobs at the time. With the introduction of new electronic computing technologies in the 1950s, this gender division of data processing work was transferred to the new computing work. Again, women were relegated to subservient positions without career prospects. This pattern persisted when word processing technologies were introduced into corporate offices in the 1980s. Social and cultural ideas—not the technologies—shaped which kind of data processing work was done by women or by men, and under which conditions. In as far as these ideas still persist, the historical analysis reveals stumbling blocks that must be addressed by any effort to increase the participation of women in computing today."(76-77)

"As mechanical office machinery entered late Victorian offices, ideas about appropriate work for men and women shaped occupational patterns that continued throughout most of the 20th century. (...) Taking up gainful employment as clerks moved these young middle class women squarely into the public sphere and required Americans to reconsider what it meant to be a respectable woman. (...) To make federal offices appropriate for the employment of these women, male clerks had to learn not to smoke, spit, swear, or be drunk, at least at work. Although female employment seemed to violate the Victorian ideals of domesticity and leisured women, federal employment became acceptable for them."(77)

"Private corporations followed suit, employing sizable numbers of women in the last two decades of the century. Unlike the federal government, however, many corporations sought to keep male and female employees strictly separated from each other. At the New York headquarters office of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, for example, men and women used separate entrances, separate doorways, separate staircases, and separate elevators. Departments were clearly gender segregated; most stenographers were female, and only women worked in the filing room. Women and men also ate in separate dining rooms, and women were not allowed to leave the premises during lunch hour."(78)

Na 1890, toen de ponskaartmachines al snel een onderdeel werden van het kantoorwerk van de overheid en van bedrijven, gingen met name vrouwen een rol spelen in het invoeren van data en het opereren van de machines.

"It is somewhat puzzling that such heavy, dirty, and noisy machines became part of the female domain in the office; after all, among the clerical occupations, operating a punch-card machine probably was one of the most physically taxing occupations.
Special spatial arrangements helped to turn punch-card operation into a woman’s job in the United States. In Germany, for example, Hollerith machines were located in separate rooms that were extremely noisy and dominated by heavy machinery - with the rationale of protecting other departments from the noise. In such an environment, tabulating rooms became male-dominated technical dungeons, and punch-card operations turned into a male-only profession."(79)

"Feminist historians of technology have shown that while women rarely broke into established male domains, they sometimes entered new jobs that required new skills [3, p. 37]. The introduction of punch-card machines was one of these rare opportunities; data processing indeed became a female occupation in the United States Yet, what initially seemed like a glorious technological opportunity soon turned into its opposite. Punch-card work became gender segregated, low skill, and low paid. While this was typical for women’s work, it was not an automatic process. Social ideas about the role of women in society determined that either men or women were assigned to a particular task."(79-80)

"A man, regardless of his personal situation, was considered entitled to a family wage that allowed him to provide for a family as the sole wage earner. A woman was thought of as part of a family where a wage earner - her father or her husband - provided for her. A woman’s wage therefore was to be a living wage that would barely allow her to subsist on her own. Although claiming punch-card operations as their domain had seemed like a victory for women in the early 20th century, by the mid-20th century, punch-card operations displayed the typical characteristics of a female occupation: segregated, routinized, low skilled, and low paid."(82)

"In the new computer department, the gender composition of the operating staff differed significantly from the punch-card division. While 189 women and 9 men had worked in the punch-card division, the new 20-person computer staff comprised 12 men and 8 women. The introduction of the computer thus reversed the gender ratio from 1 : 21 to 3 : 2. (...) In MetLife’s new computer operation division, men comprised the majority of the staff, and they also occupied the top ranks. (...) Few women found positions in the new electronic computing field, and even fewer managed to obtain leading positions. The majority of the women who had performed punch-card operations were either retrained or dismissed."(83-84)

"With the introduction of electronic computers, data processing was redefined from a task that required (female) manual dexterity to a task that boosted (male) intellectual analysis and planning. As men took over the control of electronic computers, one electronic data processing task became a female domain: data entry."(85)

"As in so many other historical examples, new computing technology created more (drudge) work for women."(86)

"Women continued to work in offices and in data processing. Relegated to data entry, they became the eyes of the new machines, while for the most part men took over the control - or brains - of the prestigious new machines and departments."(87-88)

"Business representatives agreed that women and men should work in different jobs and that men could be paid more than women. Siding with the labor movement and family-oriented conservatives, they expected that women worked during the 5 to 10 years between graduation and marriage. The ideal of this so-called marriage bar was upheld, even though increasing numbers of women remained employed beyond their mid-twenties, either not marrying or working despite being married."(88-89)

"Women were seen as not interested in a career that would promise a more qualified position [25]; they seemed content to work for just a couple of years in an unskilled, low-paid job. Women thus are presented as compliant in their position in the labor force."(90)

"Gender divisions remain a reality to the present day, even within computer specialist occupations. In 2005, fewer than one-quarter of software engineers and programmers were women in the United States, and among computer hardware engineers, as well as telecommunication, electrical, and electronic engineers, fewer than 15% were women [30]. While the 'marriage bar' may no longer hold sway, it has been replaced by the expectation that women devote themselves to their family and children. This kind of segregation easily makes female positions vulnerable for lower payment and more constricted career options. Historical analysis suggests that it is unlikely that any technological change will alter this pattern; it is up to us to change the social and institutional conditions of the wide range of computing occupations."(92)

(95) 5 - Mary Hicks: Meritocracy and Feminization in Conflict - Computerization in the British Government

[Context hier is de UK.]

Beschrijft eerst weer de situatie over de ondervertegenwoordiging van vrouwen in IT, maar concludeert al meteen:

"Yet, however seemingly timeless and enormously powerful, the idea that the history of computing is a defeminized realm is belied by multiple, important historical examples. British computing labor in the sprawling public sector, for instance, contradicts this image, while offering insight into why this perception took hold. The history of computing in the British civil service and nationalized industries reveals how computing was first institutionalized as a feminized sphere of work, and then very self-consciously re-engineered as a field of masculine endeavor."(96)

Historische onderbouwing daarvan. De publieke sector was in de UK groot vanwege het ideaal van de welvaartstaat. IT speelde er daarom een grote rol om de grote hoeveelheid gegevens aan te kunnen. Bovendien was er sinds 1950 sprake van gelijke rechten en betaling voor mannen en vrouwen, wat de analyse des te interessanter maakt.

In het pre-elektronische tijdperk van de ponskaartmachines deden vrijwel alleen de vrouwen het werk aan die machines. Dat werk werd gezien als simpel en werd slecht betaald. Toen de 'equal pay'-wet er in 1954 kwam, werd het geringe aantal - beter betaalde - mannen in die vrouwenwereld aan andere taken gezet en bleven de lonen voor vrouwen in die sector dus even laag.

"As a result of this inequitable equal pay plan, a large proportion of women working in the public sector did not benefit from the change. Rather, the association of women with deskilled, low-paid, and usually dead-ended machine work became institutionalized. Located firmly below clerical workers, those whose jobs depended on office machines formed a subclerical, feminized underclass of liminally white-collar labor. Although performed in an office, the association of these jobs with machinery meant that they were often seen as more aligned with the manual work of a factory than the intellectual work of an office. Many managers viewed the work as relatively unskilled, even though some recognized that this was not the case. Only as more expensive and complex electronic computers began to creep into government offices did this negative perception slowly began to shift."(99)

"Feminization of computation work preceded, and helped devalue, early electronic computing jobs in the public sector. The deskilled, devalued perception of the work in turn limited career opportunities and pay, ensuring that the field remained feminized."(100)

"Whereas office machine operators and programmers had once been considered low level, electronic computers had begun to change data processing from an easily circumscribed endeavor into one whose borders threatened to bleed into administrative, managerial, and long-term planning work. As office computers increasingly became perceived as management tools, management-aspirant staff would be required to function within the data processing system, working with the machines. (...) Instead of utilizing the women already present in operator jobs, young men were brought in, because department heads perceived computing work to be increasing in importance and scope."(100-101)

"Popular perception had also begun to shift slightly by the mid-1960s. More and more women were joining the workforce, and many married women were staying at work longer than before. The idea that women were unsuitable for careers or any kind of serious work responsibility had begun to be contested by many working women, as well as by journalists, political commentators, and authors of popular literature aimed at the young. (...) Increasingly, Britain had begun to realize, from the highest levels of government down, that high technology and the reskilling of their entire available workforce would be necessary to maintain superpower status as their geographic and economic empire shrank."(103)

De economische crisissituatie in de 1960-er jaren maakte dat er opener gedacht werd over banen in de iT: zowel mannen als vrouwen werden aangetrokken voor hetzelfde werk.

"Women and other nonideal recruits benefited from a situation of institutional crisis that unseated some of the ingrained sexism and classism pervading nominally equitable and gender-blind government hiring and promotion practices. In the fall of 1965, both women started work at the London post office's LEO III/26 installation, joining roughly 60 other operators spread across three shifts. LEO, short for Lyons Electronic Office, was the brainchild of managers at the Lyons tea shop and bakery company, who parlayed an in-house inventory and payroll automation project into one of the most successful early British computer companies. The original LEO was based on the Cambridge EDSAC [21]. After 2 weeks of dedicated training, during which time they memorized the functions and machine code in the thick LEO operator’s manual, the new operators began work. Roughly half were female, but all were overseen by male supervisors. For the most part, each of them recalled the atmosphere of the job as pleasant, fun, and exciting."(106)

Desondanks was het beeld bij mannen van vrouwen die dat werk deden negatief: deze vrouwen werden als onvrouwelijk, agressief gezien; en als je kinderen kreeg werd je niet meer op hetzelfde niveau aangenomen.

"The gradual phasing out of female operators in many government installations through turnover comported with the government's concerns about finding the most appropriate workers for their professionalizing cadre of management-oriented technocrats. (...) Even as working women became more numerous, and working wives more accepted, employers and British society in general withheld full tolerance. Women often faced significant stresses and institutional discrimination associated with the continuing belief that their paid work was incidental, and that the work most appropriate to them was unpaid labor in the domestic sphere."(108)

Met andere woorden: de periode met gelijke kansen en mogelijkheden voor vrouwen duurde niet lang.

"As economic conditions improved to the point where the government could afford these more desirable candidates, women who had been seen as performing well as computer operators and programmers were often seen as no longer worth the money being paid to them."(109)

"As the economic crisis and high tech labor shortage lessened, a reversion to hiring and promotion best practices that favored young men and management-level operatives, where available, took hold in public sector computing, forcing women applicants to the back of the queue for the most desirable jobs."(112)

(115) 6 - Nathan Ensmenger: Making Programming Masculine

[Context hier is de USA.]

"It [het artikel 'The Computer Girls' in Cosmopolitan] reflects very accurately the confusing - and often contradictory - messages about the proper role of women in the computing fields. On the one hand, women did play a critical role in early computing, particularly in computer programming. Compared to most technical professions, computer programming was unusually open to females. But on the other hand, in the late 1960s the computer programming community was also actively making itself masculine, pursuing a strategy of professional development that would eventually make it one of the most stereotypically male professions, inhospitable to all but the most adventurous and unconventional women."(116)

Het artikel heeft gelijk dat veel vrouwen in de 1960-er jaren programmeerden en dat de situatie voor hen op dat terrein heel positief was.

"Compared to other technical disciplines, computer programming was not highly stratified along gender lines. Not only were women able to break into the entry levels of the profession, but some were able to climb to its highest pinnacles. (...) In large part, the unusual freedom of opportunity available to women in computing was simply an outgrowth of the rapid growth of the commercial computer industry. An industry that was doubling in size every year or two simply could not afford to discriminate against women"(117)

"It would be difficult to overemphasize the degree to which the programmer labor shortage of the 1960s dominated contemporary discussions of the health and future of the computer industry. (...) As in the case of other severe labor shortages - wartime, for example - women were able to move into fields from which they might otherwise have been excluded."(118)

"What makes the vision of widespread female participation in the computer industry portrayed in 'The Computer Girls' so intriguing today, of course, is that it is so unfamiliar. From a contemporary perspective, the computing professions appear egregiously male dominated. The problem of female participation in computer science programs - declining since the mid-1980s - is of particular concern and is generally explained in terms of 'opening up' the discipline to women. The idea that many of the computing professions were not only historically unusually accepting of women, but were in fact once considered 'feminized' occupations, seems extraordinary, if not unbelievable. And yet a historical understanding of how the computing professions acquired their gendered identity, how they were 'made masculine', is critical to any attempt to address the current gender imbalance in computing. The historical perspective, in this case, is not only relevant but essential. Beginning in the 1990s, historians of computing began to recognize the crucial contributions that women made to the development of electronic computing."(120)

"This process of masculinization was closely associated with the development of the professional structures of the discipline: formal programs in computer science, professional journals and societies, certification programs, and standardized development methodologies. Seen from the perspective of aspiring computer professionals (primarily male), 'The Computer Girls' article represented not a celebration of the openness and opportunity inherent in their industry, but an indictment of everything that was wrong with it.
In terms of the larger questions addressed in this volume, this chapter provides important insights into the way in which the structures of a profession both reflect and replicate the culture of its practitioners. One of the most significant barriers to female participation in computing is the culture of computing, a culture that is perceived to be inherently (and excessively) masculine."(121)

Een goede 'case study' is de zeer belangrijke rol die vrouwelijke programmeurs in de 1940-er jaren speelden in het functioneren van de ENIAC.

"Yet, as Jennifer Light has convincingly demonstrated, the contributions of these women were subsequently systematically eliminated from the historical record. There is no question that the work of the ENIAC women was disregarded in large part simply because they were women. But almost as significant as their gender was their subordinate position as 'software' workers in a hardware-oriented development project. Obviously, the two are closely related. Of course, use of the word 'software' in this context is anachronistic - the word itself would not be introduced until 1958 - but the hierarchical distinctions and gender connotations it embodies - between 'hard' technical mastery and the 'softer', more social (and implicitly, of secondary importance) aspects of computer work - are applicable. In the status hierarchy of the ENIAC project, it was clearly the male computer engineers who were significant."(122-123)

"The telephone switchboard-like appearance of the ENIAC programming cable-and-plug panels reinforced the notion that programmers were mere machine operators, that programming was more handicraft than science, more feminine than masculine, more mechanical than intellectual. The idea that the development of hardware was the real business of computing, and that software was at best secondary, persisted for many years."(123)

Analyse en flow charts maken werd als het intellectueel uitdagende gezien. Coderen - als het simpelweg uitvoeren van wat de flow charts aangaven - werd als een simpele taak gezien die wel door vrouwen gedaan kon worden.

"The conflation of programming and coding, and the association of both with low-status clerical labor, suggested the ways in which early software workers were gendered female. In the ENIAC project, of course, the programmers actually were women. But the suggestion that 'coding' was low-status clerical work also implied an additional association with female labor. As Margery Davies, Sharon Hartman Strom, and Elyce Rotella have described, clerical work had, by the second decade of the 20th century, become largely feminized."(124)

"The neat distinction made by Goldstine and von Neumann between analysis and implementation quickly broke down in practice."(125)

Programmeeurs moesten de hardware kennen en hun instructies daar op afstemmen. Dat bleek een hoop inzicht en gevoel en kennis met zich mee te brengen. In de 1950-er jaren begon men programmeren daarom te zien als iets geheimzinnigs voor zeer getalenteerde insiders.

"The heady combination of mathematics, engineering 'tinkering', and arcane technique attracted a certain kind of male to computer programming. (...) Either way, this new occupational and professional identity, whether based on the academic prestige of the emerging discipline of computer science or the exclusivity of the 'lone gun' tinkerer, was essentially masculine."(125-126)

"The notion that programming was a 'black art' pervades the literature from the early decades of computing. Even today, more than half a century after the invention of the first electronic computers, the notion that computer programming still retains an essentially 'artistic' character is still widely accepted. Whether or not this is true or desirable is an entirely different question - a subject of considerable and contentious debate. What is important is that by characterizing the work that they did as 'artistic', programmers could lay claim to the autonomy and authority that came with being an artist. Note that the appeal here is to the tradition of the artisan, or craftsman, which is a masculine identity, not the potentially effeminate 'artsy' type."(127)

"The widespread perception that programming ability was an innate ability, rather than an acquired skill or the product of a particular form of technical education, could be seen as gender neutral or even female friendly. (...)
But the aptitude tests and personality profiles did embody and privilege masculine characteristics. For example, despite the growing consensus within the industry (particularly in business data processing) that mathematical training was irrelevant to most commercial programming, popular aptitude tests such as the IBM PAT still emphasized mathematical ability."(127)

Een nog kwalijker rol speelden de profielen die gehanteerd werden bij sollicitaties. Programmeurs werden bijvoorbeeld neergezet als 'niet geïnteresseerd in mensen'.

"The idea that computer programmers lacked 'people skills' quickly became part of the lore of the computer industry. (...) Needless to say, these psychological profiles embodied a preference for stereotypically masculine characteristics."(128-129)

"The association of masculine personality characteristics with inherent programming ability helped create an occupational culture in which female programmers were seen as exceptional or marginal. Only by behaving less 'female' could they be perceived as being acceptable. Many women still did continue to be hired as programmers and other computer specialists, but they did so in an environment that was becoming increasingly normalized as masculine."(129)

Je kunt niet zeggen dat er sprake was van een samenzwering tegen vrouwen, vindt Ensmenger.

"The test format simply did not allow for any more nuanced or meaningful or context-specific problem solving. And, in the 1950s and 1960s at least, such questions did privilege the typical male educational experience. Again, this bias toward male programmers was not so much deliberate as it was convenient. The fact that the use of lazy screening practices inadvertently excluded large numbers of potential female trainees was simply never considered. But the increasing assumption that the average programmer was also male did play a key role in the establishment of a highly masculine programming subculture.
There has been much written in recent years about the distinctively masculine culture of computing and the way in which this culture discourages women from entering the computing professions [49–51]. Of all the explanations given for the deplorably low rates of female participation in computing (or at least in academic computer science), cultural arguments are the most convincing."(130)

"I have written extensively elsewhere about the 'Question of Professionalism' as it emerged in the computer fields during the late 1960s. For the purposes of this chapter it is enough to note that the development of the structures of a programming profession - including formal programs in academic computer science, professional journals and societies, and professional certification programs - became the goal of many computer programmers, and their corporate employers, as a means of addressing the perceived 'software crisis' of the late 1960s."(134)

"The desire to develop professional standards is an understandable, and indeed laudable, agenda for programmers to pursue. But it does carry with it certain implications for the gender dynamics of the discipline. As Margaret Rossiter and others have suggested, professionalization implies masculinization. The imposition of formal educational requirements, such as a college degree, can make it difficult for women - particularly women who have taken time off to raise children - to enter the profession. Similarly, certification programs or licensing requirements - such as the Data Processing Management Association’s Certificate in Data Processing Program - also erected barriers to entry that disproportionately affected women."(135)

"The job category of 'programmer' had been used as a blanket term to describe a broad range of computer workers, but it was increasingly replaced by a complicated hierarchy of job titles: junior programmer, senior programmer, lead programmer, junior analyst, senior analysts, program manager, and so on. Again, it is difficult to gather accurate statistics on who occupied what categories, but there is some evidence to suggest that women were generally confined to the lower levels of the professional pyramid. This calls into question the more optimistic claims about the participation of women in computing: without knowing exactly what kinds of work these women were doing, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the true nature of the opportunities available to women in computing."(135)

"Instead of asking why there are so few women in computer science, we might ask instead why a particular vision of the discipline - one based on masculine ideals and values - came to dominate the academic study of computer programming."(137)

(143) 7 - Greg Downey: Gender and Computing in the Push-Button Library

[Context hier is weer de USA.]

De komst van computers binnen het bibliotheekwezen heeft nog weinig aandacht gekregen. Gezien het feit dat daar voornamelijk vrouwen werkten, is dat wel nodig.

"Since librarianship was numerically dominated by women all through the development of the general-purpose programmable computer, looking for connections between women and computing in the library seems like a good place to start. But investigating 'the library' is no simple task. Historians of librarianship might focus on large research and academic libraries, on urban and suburban public libraries, on primary and secondary school libraries, or on a myriad of corporate and government libraries and archives. No matter what the size or audience, all libraries are technological spaces, suffused with individual artifacts for information storage and access (from printed books and periodicals to magnetic audiovisual and digital media) and also networked systems for information organization and retrieval (from the drawer-filed catalog cards of a century ago to the microfilm and digital catalogs of today). In a very real sense, the library, at all of its various scales and sites, acts as an internetworked information technology made up of both human and material components."(143-144)

De toekomstige bibliotheek - dat was al in 1964 duidelijk - zou een 'drukknopbibliotheek' worden. Maar het waren vooral mannen die daar voor gingen en er een belangrijke rol in speelden.

"But while librarianship was agreed to be an 'intelligent woman's' profession in a numerical sense, it was also a gendered profession in an analytical sense, in three ways. Across the main divisions of academic, public, school, and corporate libraries, a wage division of labor persisted: women working at the same jobs or performing the same tasks as men received lower remuneration regardless of age, education, or experience. Similarly, in a vertical division of labor, men held disproportionately more positions of power - directorships, management positions, or library school professorships - than women. And in a horizontal division of labor, men and women tended to be segregated into different kinds of tasks, with women more likely to perform both the most meticulous of back-office 'technical services' work (cataloging and circulation) and the most nurturing of front-desk 'public services' work (running children's storytime and literacy groups). Through the 1960s and 1970s, "survey after survey reported lower median salaries for women, fewer professional perquisites, and a clouded view of the career ladder, which disclosed men at the top and a preponderance of women at the bottom of the library hierarchy"."(145-146)

"As both library computerization and the 'second wave feminism' of the women's movement gained momentum through the 1970s, the field of librarianship seemed poised for an intertwined technological and social revolution. Yet the historical record concerning sex discrimination and computer innovation in libraries through the 1970s and 1980s tells not one integrated story, but two separate ones."(146)

"Thus, from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, both the back-office division of labor in cataloging and the front-desk face that the library presented to the public changed dramatically. But throughout this fervent period of professional activism, neither the feminist writers nor the technical writers connected issues of sex and gender in the library occupation to issues of technology in the library infrastructure."(147)

"Enthusiasm within librarianship for adopting computers during the 1960s resulted in countless pilot projects and system proposals - most of them located within the same large academic and corporate sites where men held the greatest positions of power in librarianship. (...) Computers would automate away the (feminine) clerical and augment the (masculine) creative work - a root argument in almost every theory of the 'new information society' from the 1960s onward."(149)

We zouden ons moeten afvragen waarom computertechniek die speciale status verleent aan mannen? Want bibliotheekwerk was altijd al vol met technieken om informatie toegankelijk te maken.

"Thus, a longer-term historical investigation that crosses all of these boundaries is called for, rather than an exclusive focus on computation. (...) Following the metadata through such processes - how it is made visible and invisible, valued and devalued, rendered in both physical and virtual forms - allows the historian of technology to analytically connect practices of librarianship across vastly different institutional, functional, social, and technological contexts."(157)

(163) Part III - Media and Culture

(165) 8 - Hilde Corneliussen: Cultural Perceptions of Computers in Norway 1980–2007 - From 'Anybody' Via 'Male Experts' to 'Everybody'

"However, unless we believe that men really do have certain masculine qualities that make them more suitable than women in relation to computers, we need to examine the development of ideas about gender and computers."(165)

"This chapter explores how the computer was culturally appropriated in Norway since the 1980s. We will explore how the relationship between gender and computers was perceived and presented in Norway's largest newspaper, Aftenposten."(166)

"A keyword in the analysis below is 'discourse', referring to socially constructed meanings around a limited area, such as the computer. Discourse theory provides a useful tool to understand and analyze how meanings are constructed, preserved, passed along to others, and, not the least, changed - in continual negotiation. "(166)

"The most common focus on girls and women in Aftenposten concerned their lack of interest, experience, and skills, while by contrast the dominant focus on boys and men was their fascination and extraordinary computer skills. This trend contributes to making computer skills both visible and invisible in a certain gendered discursive pattern."(168)

"However, a 1997 survey found that only 1% of women who had access to the Internet actually did use it, against 12% of men; and similarly, only 1 in 5 women against 1 in 3 men used the PC at home. The survey obviously documented a lower level of use among women. This focus on the difference between men and women strengthened the impression of women as nonusers, not only by ignoring the female users, who - although not representing a large proportion at that time - still existed, but also by disregarding that a dominant majority of men also were nonusers, with two-thirds of men not using the PC and 88% not using the Internet at home. The male nonusers were simply not discussed at all - not in this or any other news report presenting statistics. Women were identified as the future losers, while a similar threat toward male nonusers was overlooked. But why would it be more interesting that women were lagging behind compared to male Internet users rather than the fact that the majority of men were also not users? And why would only female nonusers face the threat of becoming 'the losers of the future'?
This episode illustrates how relations between gender and technology were made visible and invisible in a certain pattern. Women’s nonuse and men's embrace of technology - even though it did not include a majority of men - were made visible. Simultaneously, male nonusers and female users were ignored or made discursively invisible, contributing to an overall homogenization of a masculine discourse of computers."(168)

"Thus, the reports focusing on women's lack of interest in the computer greatly enhanced the impression of women as nonusers, making them the discursively visible ones, at the cost of female users, who remained discursively invisible.
In sharp contrast to the treatment of girls and women, the dominant focus on boys and men was rather their exceptional interest, extraordinary skills, and even love for the computer. Two recurring themes operated side by side. First, the reports obviously admired the boys’ and young men’s skills. They were described as self-educated computer 'wizards'."(169)

"There are striking differences between the news reports focusing on women and those focusing on men. First, reports discussing women often involved a comparison of women with men, while entries about men most often remained focused on men alone. Second, women's attitudes toward computers were often explained through analyzing them 'as gender', while gender rarely figured as an explanation in articles about men. Third, the reports about women frequently encouraged female nonusers to acquire computer skills, while not a single report encouraged the same for male nonusers."(169-170)

De cijfers in Noorwegen over de participatie van vrouwen in IT zijn in overeenstemming met die in de VS.

"Reports discussing women’s low participation in computing education and low interest in computers frequently tried to explain this fact, as well as how to change it, by conceptualizing men and women as essentially different. Men and women have different attitudes toward computer technology, it was claimed. It was assumed that men have a playful and exploring attitude while women are driven solely by need, not by enthusiasm or inquisitiveness. Men get addicted, and they love the technology for itself, whereas women ask what they can use it for. Boys are interested in 'finesses and technique' while girls are interested in 'communication, email and information retrieval', arguments well known also from earlier research. Men and women were also described as having essentially different qualities, and several entries claimed that women in certain ways were better than men with regard to computing: "women are better in comprehending the users’ situation. Men have a tendency to lose themselves in exciting details"."(175-176)

Na 2000 - toen computers en Internet door iedereen gebruikt begonnen te worden voor alles - veranderde het discours.

(187) 9 - Aristotle Tympas / Hara Konsta / Theodore Lekkas ? Serkan Karas: Constructing Gender and Technology in Advertising Images - Feminine and Masculine Computer Parts

[Context is Griekenland.]

"We try to show that the computer is not uniformly masculine since it contains certain components that are strongly linked to feminine images and presumed feminine traits. At the same time, we maintain, women are not so much excluded from computing; they are included in computing but through a specific gender-stereotyped manner. As we show through an extensive analysis of 1500 computing advertisements, there is a dramatic overrepresentation of women shown working at the keyboard-input and the printer-output parts of the computer. We believe that these advertising images have been consequential in constructing the public image of the computer and in shaping, or at least reinforcing, gender-specific relationships to the computer."(187)

"This chapter seeks to understand this gendered difference in computing work and salaries, to understand why a woman finds it 'natural' to end up at the keyboard and the printer after undergoing university education in computing (e.g., Greece, Malaysia, and Turkey) or, alternately, after avoiding university education in computing altogether, such as in the United States and many other OECD countries with substantial male 'overrepresentation' in computer science. (...) We posit that there is an imagined difference, not a natural one. Specifically, we have sought to understand the construction of an imagined difference in the public image of computing. We examine how this image has been constructed in and through computing advertisements."(190)

"Our argument in this chapter points to continuity, not change. More accurately, it points to continuity over change. From a gender perspective, impressive technical change in computing technology has been coupled by equally impressive social and cultural continuity."(192)

"Placing women in closed offices, giving them little space to move, locating them in lower positions, sitting rather than standing, looking straight at the screen while having their hands on the keyboard [in tenstelling tot mannen in die advertenties] - all these implied that women were doing the routine work of a secretary or data-entry clerk. This interpretation can be confirmed by considering an important exception to this rule. When the user of the computer was clearly a high-status creator (e.g., a scientist or engineer), the person sitting in front of the computer was nearly always a man."(197-198)

"In addition to connecting female hands to the keyboard, advertisements connected female faces to the computer screen."(201)

(211) Part IV - Women in Computing

(213 - 10 - Janet Abbate: The Pleasure Paradox - Bridging the Gap Between Popular Images of Computing and Women’s Historical Experiences

[De context hier wordt gevormd door de USA en de UK.]

"Women's pleasure in computing is an aspect of history that has gone largely unexplored. Most studies of the underrepresentation of women in computing focus on negatives, such as discrimination, hostile climates in classrooms and workplaces, and ways in which girls are discouraged from getting the necessary preparation in math and science. The quotations above [begin hoofdstuk] are striking in describing computing not merely as a field where women can survive, but one that is especially good for women: one where stereotypes lose their sting, where work is both challenging and social, where parenthood can be an asset rather than an obstacle. Were such experiences historically exceptional, or surprisingly common? Can women’s accounts of what appealed to them about computer work in the past suggest strategies for attracting more women in the future?
This chapter will draw on interviews with American and British women who began computing careers between the 1940s and the 1980s to identify aspects of the field they found especially welcoming or pleasurable. In focusing on pleasure, I do not mean to imply that my interviewee’s experiences in computing were all positive; virtually all of them recalled hardship and discrimination during the course of their careers. My point is simply that the negative aspects have been much better documented than the rewards."(214)

" It was not until the 1980s that the male 'computer geek' or 'hacker' became a widespread stereotype, paralleling - and perhaps contributing to - the decline in women’s participation."(215)

"Any study of women in computing must qualify what is meant by the terms 'women' and 'computing'. Here I draw on oral history interviews I conducted with 52 programmers and computer scientists. This sample was selected to provide a diverse range of experiences, including computer science as well as programming; British and American contexts; government, industry, and academic employment; various class and educational backgrounds; and well-known figures as well as ordinary ones. The United Kingdom and United States were chosen because they were the countries most active in computing in the early decades covered by this study. (...) To highlight possible gender barriers, the sample focuses on areas of computing that are now considered highly masculinized - programming, computer science, and to some extent management - rather than areas such as data entry, documentation, or customer support, in which more women have been found. My sample also does not include any nonwhite women, who did participate in computing in the early decades but not in large numbers; and it obviously does not represent the views of women who were discouraged or excluded from ever entering the field."(215-216)

"My interviewees described a diverse range of rewards from computing work: excitement at participating in novel and important projects; pride in meeting the day-to-day challenges of programming or research; feeling appreciated and respected by co-workers; comfort in financial security; pleasure in workplace camaraderie; and satisfaction in service to others. While one might expect many of these feelings to be shared by men, the women's accounts are notable for what they leave out: there is little emphasis on achievements generally associated with male ambition, such as amassing wealth, attaining high rank or status, outshining their peers in technical prowess, or achieving public recognition. Perhaps the women felt that such 'masculine' ambitions were inappropriate to a female professional identity; perhaps they simply considered them unattainable in a male-dominated workplace. Regardless, it appears that the enticements that computing offers to women might not be the same as those that are used to recruit men."(217)

"They believed that programmers and computer scientists were largely judged on the quality of their work, and that this minimized gender bias. At the technical level, therefore, they generally felt that merit was rewarded and women were recognized for their contributions. But gender equality evaporated at the management level: while some women were able to rise to positions of real power, many more encountered glass ceilings and closed doors when they tried to move beyond purely technical positions. As my interviewees perceived it, then, the problem was not necessarily with computing per se, but with a male-biased management culture that permeated nearly every industry. "(222)

"Overall, these accounts of pleasure and success in computing challenge both masculine and feminine stereotypes. They defy feminine stereotypes because the women enjoyed immersing themselves in technology, being on the cutting edge, and working all-out to achieve a goal, which are typically seen as masculine preferences. They also reject male-oriented stereotypes about success, because the women see success as more than 'winning' against other people or gaining personal acclaim, power, or fortune; their definitions of success include making a difference to society, mentoring others, and working with people they like."(222-223)

"The dissonance between the stereotypes and the historical reality of women’s experiences in computing suggests several policy approaches.
1. Reframe the Popular Image of Computing. Women will not be drawn into computing unless they can imagine an identity as a female computer professional that is consistent with personality traits they value - which for many women includes being creative, well-rounded, and sociable. Computer professionals, employers, teachers, and school guidance counselors should emphasize how computing work relates to the real-world needs of society, as well as the fun, intellectual excitement, and camaraderie it can provide.(...)
2. Discard Narrow Gender Stereotypes and Accommodate Diversity. Women’s accounts illustrate that the profession needs and can accommodate a diversity of personality types: those who want to be immersed in technology can find like-minded souls who will not patronize them, while those who want a more social experience can enjoy exercising their communication and management skills along with their technical expertise.(...)
3. Reconsider Reward Systems. The computing profession as it currently exists provides many rewards that women have identified as valuable: the intrinsic satisfaction of fascinating work; team solidarity; and appreciation for their technical skill and performance. But the accomplishments women see as most important are not necessarily those that receive the most recognition. Teamwork and social skills are rarely rewarded in proportion to their productive value: after all, a cleverly engineered product may be useless if it does not get to market because of bad management, or if it fails to meet the customer’s needs due to poor communication. Women’s firsthand accounts show that the particular ways they defined 'success' and experienced satisfaction did not always follow the dominant career model based (implicitly) on male priorities and experiences.(...)
Employers who want to retain talented workers should recognize and reward the communications and social skills that women (and men) bring to the job. Managers should resist the tendency to tie perceptions of good performance to masculine stereo-types - for example, equating obsessiveness with technical mastery, or aggressiveness with leadership.
4. Restore the Fun to Computing. Interviewees' descriptions of what initially attracted them to computing suggest that we should offer today’s young women the chance to try programming in a way that they will find fun and exciting. (...)
The same research shows that this negative perception often changes when the women learn programming in a supportive environment and discover for themselves the pleasure of mastering a technical challenge. To maximize the appeal for women, programming exercises should be connected to real-world problems, and students should have a chance to interact with end-users, both to appreciate the challenge of understanding users' needs and to have the satisfaction of pleasing a client."(224-226)

(229) 11 - Jeffrey Yost: Programming Enterprise - Women Entrepreneurs in Software and Computer Services

[De context hier: de USA.]

Dit hoofdstuk is gebaseerd op interviews met vrouwen in leidende functies in de computerwereld.

"While no other women have reached the level of recognition and stature in the IT world as Fiorina and Whitman, fully one-tenth of Fortune’s 2008 '50 Most Powerful Women' were high ranking executives at IT giants - from Safra Catz, the co-president of Oracle, who oversees day-to-day operations for this leading enterprise software firm, to Ginni Rometty, IBM’s Senior Vice President for Global Business Services, who runs the $18 billion division critical to IBM’s future growth. One of the primary reasons these leading women IT executives have been in the spotlight, however, is because many glass ceilings remain firmly in place and there are relatively few women in these top posts."(230)

"This chapter is focused on an alternative path of women to leadership positions in the IT world. It concentrates on women entrepreneurs from the 1960s through the 1980s in the software and computer services industries - the companies they founded and ran and their leadership within trade associations for these industries. There are many challenges to unearthing this important history. Virtually no archival resources exist to provide records on these firms, and little archival material is available on IT trade associations. An exception to the latter is the ADAPSO Records at the Charles Babbage Institute. This collection and a series of oral histories with women IT entrepreneurs are the foundational resources for this chapter.
The history of women IT entrepreneurs is not only uncharted terrain; it is also a subset of the larger history of women entrepreneurs that has been grossly understudied. (...) Hence, the history of women who founded and led small to mid-sized software and computer services businesses, and provided leadership to trade associations in these industries, has remained outside the dominant currents of women’s history and business history. "(230)

Dit hoofdstuk beschrijft eerst de situatie van werk voor vrouwen in de IT-industrie en daarna drie casussen van vrouwen die een eigen bedrijf oprichtten.

"Women such as Grace Gentry, Phyllis Murphy, Luanne Johnson, and Peggy Smith all had worked within IT departments or divisions of mid-sized to large corporations and organizations and, to varying degrees, saw limitations in advancement to leadership roles or met with inadequate funding and lack of respect. Each of these women demonstrated vision, courage, and a mixture of self-reliance and cooperative leadership styles to launch and grow new computer services and software products businesses between the 1960s and 1980s. While at times these women faced higher hurdles - for instance, Luanne Johnson could not get any kind of credit line early on, and Peggy Smith after getting remarried was asked to have her husband co-sign for her existing line despite his having no role in the business (something that definitely would not have occurred in reverse) - they all persevered and had considerable success."(247)

(251) 12 - Thomas Misa: Gender Codes - Lessons from History

[Hm, de context hier zou algemeen moeten zijn, maar betreft toch eigenlijk alleen de USA.]

"The fascination with personal computing in the 1980s widened the audience for popular books on computer programmers and their personalities. Yet, oddly enough, these popular accounts tended to narrow the image of computing. And this image has a man’s face. Programmers at Work (1986) presents 19 interviews with 'brilliant programmers', Out of Their Minds (1995) celebrates the lives and discoveries of 15 great computer scientists, while more recently Beautiful Code (2007) takes the aesthetic pulse of 38 'leading programmers'. These books profile a total of 72 computer scientists; and among them just one woman, Laura Wingerd, a software product manager. Somehow the editors and publishers unaccountably passed over such leading women figures as Jean Bartik, Francis (Betty) Holberton, Jean Sammet, Fran Allen, and Barbara Liskov. (Each of these women have won such notable accolades as the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Turing Award, widely acclaimed to be computing’s Nobel Prize, or being named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum.) Given women’s clear presence in the practices, communities, and institutions of computing that are amply documented in this book, why did the public image of computing become so male? Three examples illustrate the workings of media bias and institutional blindness."(251)

"This chapter assembles the lessons to be learned from the other chapters in this book. To put our findings in a nutshell, we believe that computing's present-day dilemma with gender - the place of men and women in its practices and institutions and images - has a great deal to do with computing’s history. A stiff dose of accurate history, dispelling the male-centered mythology broadcast by Cringely and Wired and other popular media accounts, is one positive result of this volume. We can review this accomplishment in greater detail."(254)

Waarom daalde de participatie van vrouwen in de IT-sector zo na 1985? Omdat er sprake was van een macho-cultuur in die sector. Omdat de werkomstandigheden vrouwonvriendelijk waren (gezien zwangerschap, kinderzorg, zorg in het algemeen die bij vrouwen bleef liggen). Omdat de beeldvorming in de media mannen centraal stelde als hogepriester van de computertechniek, als nerd, als eenzame hacker met gebrek aan sociale vaardigheden. Omdat die stereotypen weer in beroeps- en vaardighedentests terecht kwamen zodat mannen eerder kansen kregen dan vrouwen.

(265) 13 - Caroline Hayes: Gender Codes - Prospects for Change

[De context hier?]

Er moet allereerst een oplossing komen voor de wereldwijde daling in participatie van vrouwen in IT-studies en IT-witteboordenberoepen. Er worden hier drie mogelijke verklaringen gegeven voor dat verschijnsel.

"There are numerous hypotheses as to why the proportion of women is shrinking in several important segments of computing. We will explore the strengths and weaknesses of three hypotheses: a lack of female role models; an unappealing, masculine nerd culture; and negative, masculine stereotypes of computing."(266)

Vrouwelijke rolmodellen alleen hebben tot nu toe weinig geholpen (er is immers wel een groei van afgestudeerde en gepromoveerde en aangestelde vrouwen in de hogere regionen van de universiteit). De masculiene nerdcultuur alleen is ook niet de reden: bij allerlei andere typische mannenberoepen is er wél sprake van gestage groei van vrouwenparticipatie. De derde verklaring is toch ook problematisch:

"The 'computer science geek' is typically portrayed as an antisocial white male, highly skilled and intelligent, with little attention to personal hygiene. This image is not terribly appealing to either men or women, but it is likely more unappealing to women. The geek image does not necessarily match reality; while such people exist, the average person actually in computer science is not like the 'geek'. Thus, it may be external perceptions of computer science culture that deter many women, more so than the actual culture. The computer geek image has been around for many years. Why should women be more deterred by it now?"(268)

Het verschil is dat juist na 1985 die beeldvorming algemeen en populair werd in de media, omdat computertechniek en later Internet populair werden.

"If the popular image of computer science is a significant factor in the gender gap, then changing or modifying the popular images may be a crucial strategy. While it may be difficult to erase the already established computer geek stereotype, it may be possible to modify it or augment it with other more positive images of computing. (...) Is it possible for computer science to introduce new, positive images of computing that can counteract the existing negative ones? And if one is to do so, how can they be introduced effectively?"(269)

"Historical studies may help change the existing image of computing. Stories and profiles of women in computing gathered through oral history interviews can be presented to the students, researchers, and interested members of the public through a rich variety of existing and new-media forms, ranging from photographic exhibits of successful women to videos on YouTube. Such stories may have the power to counteract the misbegotten idea that computing has always been about men, and may help to attract a more diverse group into computing’s future."(273)