Researcher reveals how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”

[redgreenandblue]

http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D

Asked to picture a computer programmer, most of us describe the archetypal computer geek, a brilliant but socially-awkward male. We imagine him as a largely noctural creature, passing sleepless nights writing computer code. According to workplace researchers, this stereotype of the lone male computer whiz is self-perpetuating, and it keeps the computer field overwhelming male. Not only do hiring managers tend to favor male applicants, but women are less likely to pursue careers a field where feel they won’t fit in.

It may be surprising, then, to learn that the earliest computer programmers were women and that the programming field was once stereotyped as female.

The "Computer Girls"

...

[pnwmom]

1. I vaguely remember a Katherine Hepburn movie along those lines, with a giant computer

taking up the room. It was more like she was a librarian, though -- maybe that's why the field was associated with women?

[abelenkpe]

2. OMG I loved that movie!

As a woman in tech I'm liking the recent articles pointing out that women have played an important role in this field from the start.

Would rather be called a geek than a girl though. But whatever!

[HopeHoops]

3. Without Commodore Grace Hopper, COBOL may never have been created.

Now that might not seem like a bad thing, especially if you've ever looked at COBOL code, but it did pave the way for other compiled languages and it is impossible to tell how much further behind we would be without her dedication to the task. And, for trivia's sake, her team is credited with coining the term "bug" because of a moth that was stuck in a relay. They taped it into the log book.

[Igel]

4. That was a large portion of it--the status accorded programmers.

You also have to consider the manpower situation. It was during the war. My mother worked in a steelmill, a man's job, because the men were elsewhere and workers were needed.

One summer--IIRC, '80--I worked for DARCom as a civilian summer intern. There was this old woman in the office who worked there as a data processor. Her desk was almost an afterthought, wedged in a corner of the room.

On the wall over her desk were pictures of the Eniac team. She was in them. Her job was to take the program and implement it--to go from computer bank to computer bank with patch cords and hardwire in the operations or proof-check what some other techie had hardwired in. After the war she went to college and majored in math and education. She became a math teacher in, IIRC, a middle school.

The pictures were taken in a lowslung brick building just a block or two away from where our mainframe and nifty new minicomputer were, at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD. She ended her working life where she had begun it over 35 years before.

She was always in awe of the advancement of technology. I can only wonder what she thought if she was still around when the mainframe was phased out for networked desktops.