
The First Women in Tech Didn’t Leave, Men Pushed Them Out - walterclifford
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-first-women-in-tech-didnt-leavemen-pushed-them-out-1512907200
======
ci5er
The article's thesis may or may not be correct, but the proponents of the
argument do themselves no favors by conflating programmers with data-entry
clerks.

EDIT: As far as I know - people like Grace Hopper never got out (also US vs UK
and Private vs Government and/or Military jobs, as examples, confound that
stats)

~~~
eesmith
I can't read the pay-walled WSJ article but it looks like it's related to the
recent book by Dr. Marie Hicks. She recent gave a talk at the Computer History
Museum, which covers an example very close to what you objected to.

At [https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198](https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=2198)
you can see the advertisement "This typist can control your invoicing, stock
records and sales statistics all at once ... electronically, but not without
help from Susie her computer."

Hicks then says that ad copy goes on to describe the types of programming this
typist will be doing, "but she's still just a typist, not a programmer."

I therefore believe the proponents argument isn't that they themselves
conflate the two, but that (British) computing in the 1960s did the
conflation.

As for Adm. Hopper, yes, certainly some women stayed in the field. But then
there's pictures like
[https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999](https://youtu.be/WTLJ7saIV3o?t=999) where
a woman in her 20s or 30s has a "retirement" party, because she's getting
married, so has to leave the workforce - which could be compulsory or coerced.

Then once it was realized that programming _was_ more than a clerical task,
women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were
going to leave once they got married.

~~~
ci5er
Hmmm.

My formative adult years, at the beginning of my career, were spent in Japan,
where _every_ female was expected to get married and get out by the age of
28-or-so.

I have no opinion or comment on whether that is good or bad for the Japanese
men and women in their own society.

But after that, I got to the US, and most of the women that I met in "my
ranks" of career maturity were definitely very capable - and in it for the
long haul. Which is to say: I've never seen the winnowing process up-close-
and-personal.

I'm guessing that something happens between the ages of 20 and 35? Or maybe
less women join in the US in the first place? I don't know. But I think that
if we are going to explore what's going on - we're going to have to go
upstream of what most of these types of pieces are looking at...

> Then once it was realized that programming was more than a clerical task,
> women were more and more forced out because it was expected that women were
> going to leave once they got married.

That's very interesting if it is true. I'll have to dig into this a bit.

EDIT: I am a male, if that wasn't obvious.

~~~
eesmith
Based on your comments, you are around 50 years old, and after growing up in
the US spent about 1/3 of your adult life in (mostly) Japan. Figuring
(50-18)/3 = 11 years, so you returned in the mid 1990s.

The 1980s was the peak time for women entering professional software
development, at least as measured by the percentage of women vs. men receiving
a BS in computer science. It was 37% in 1984/1985, says
[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-
careers/wom...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-
careers/women-computer-science-grads--the-bump-before-the-decline.html) ,
while in 2010 it was 18%.

Those women who graduated in 1985 at 22 are about 55 years old now. This puts
them as slightly older than you, but close enough that they would still be
part of "your ranks."

I point this out because if you base things on your experience then you should
realize that your experience comes from working with an unusual cohort.

As you say, there is a US/UK difference. The speaker I pointed to said that
the differences in gender expectations were stronger in the UK than in the US,
and that part of those expectations was rooted in imperialism.

~~~
ci5er
Either your math or investigative skills are impressive.

> your experience comes from working with an unusual cohort.

How so? I mean - you've got me pegged, but why is it unusual?

> that part of those expectations was rooted in imperialism.

Does that follow?

~~~
eesmith
It was unusual because of the relatively high number of women who entered
computing in the 1980s.

Or are you asking me why the 1980s was different than the 10 years before and
after? For that I can only at best conjecture.

Traditionally, mathematically inclined women studied mathematics, with
thoughts to being a math teacher. Grace Hopper got her PhD in math and taught
mathematics at Vasser, for example. Katherine G. Johnson, of "Hidden Figures"
fame, first started as a teacher before becoming a research mathematician.

Traditionally, businessmen had women working as secretaries, and it was the
women who learned to type. Two of the many exceptions include newspaper
writers and army clerks, but in general typing was feminizing.

That's why many of the first women in computing came from a math background,
and did the typing=programming work.

(Going back to your original comment, it really was seen that programming was
little different than typing. Do you remember Simonyi's meta-programming
concept, which he tried to implement at Microsoft? Wikipedia quotes Cringely
"the metaprogrammer was the designer, decision maker, and communication
controller in a software development group.... individual progammers were
allowed to make no design decisions about the project. All they did was write
the code as described by the metaprogrammer.... A programmer with a problem or
a question would take it to the metaprogrammer, who could come up with an
answer or transfer the question to another programmer..." This sort of
programmer is little more than a typist, and I think in the 1970s many people
thought that an analyst could figure out the grand plan, drawn up with
architecture-like flow charts, at which point it became little more than a
typing project to convert it into software.)

The 1960s and 1970s was the big struggle for woman's rights; in the workplace,
in the home, and in general. By the 1980s it was socially acceptable for women
to have a career. (As compared to going to college to get an M.R.S. degree -
an old phrase I didn't learn until about 10 years ago.)

But still in an era when using a keyboard was generally considered secretarial
work, and hence woman's work, so not as attractive to men.

It was also just at the start of the microcomputer era, so men and women
graduating with a CS degree in 1985 were unlikely to have used a computer at
all before going to college.

While those in later years may have had an Apple ][ or TRS-80 while still
kids. And unfortunately, those microcomputers fit into all sorts of cultural
biases. As one example, girls are supposed to be social, while it's okay for
boys to be in their computers for hours.

Honestly though, there's a lot on that topic, and I can't begin to do it
justice. I just wanted to explain enough so you might get a sense that your
cohort might not be representative.

As for "imperialism", I didn't really understand Hicks' argument from
interview I linked to. I assume I would need to read the book to understand.

~~~
ci5er
> While those in later years may have had an Apple ][ or TRS-80 while still
> kids. And unfortunately, those microcomputers fit into all sorts of cultural
> biases.

How so?

~~~
eesmith
I gave an example. Are you asking for more?

While I've read a few papers on the topic, this is not a subject I know well
enough to even remember what those papers were. Instead, I can point you do a
Google Scholar search, for "gender stereotype microcomputer".

The first with a free PDF link is
[http://education.msu.edu/cepse/mqm/documents/MQMPrelimArticl...](http://education.msu.edu/cepse/mqm/documents/MQMPrelimArticleFS03.pdf)
. It has a two page review of the literature, with more examples.

I used "microcomputer" in the search, which will mostly return hits from the
1980s and 1990s. That paper was from 1997. A search for "gender differences
computer programming", limited to the last few years, found
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4323745/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4323745/)
from 2015:

"However, it is clear from a large body of scientific research that there are
significant social barriers to women’s entry into computer science and
engineering that preclude women from being able to make a truly “free” choice
(Ceci et al., 2009). Here we analyze those barriers and what can be done about
them."

~~~
ci5er
Thanks!

------
dominotw
There has never been a better time to be a woman in the valley. My female
family members have gotten a job everywhere they have interviewed, even at the
top tier. There is no "pushing out" now, infact its the opposite, everyone
from recruiter to the hiring managers have high level okr's and bonuses for
finding and hiring women.

Is it really necessary to dig out some skeletons and create some controversy
where there is none.

~~~
eesmith
I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time.
(As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that
historians stop what they are doing?

I also don't understand what controversy you think is being created. We all
knew that women were forced out of the field in the 1960s and 1970s, so that
isn't controversial, and we know that the percentage of women in the computing
industry is still not back to what it use to be.

I didn't, however, know the details of why that happened. Hicks' recent talk
for the Computer History Museum helped me understand just how strong the
cultural reasons were in that era against women having managerial positions
over men in that era, and how the presumption that women would leave once
getting marriage collided with the increasing professionalization of the field
to help get women kicked out.

Even if times are great for women now, surely it's important to know some of
the history of when it wasn't great? As an analogy, in school we learned about
poor working and food safety conditions at the start of the Progressive Era,
in order to understand the impact of muckrackers like Ida M. Tarbell and Upton
Sinclair, and legal actions like the split-up of Standard Oil and creation of
the Pure Food and Drug Act. If we don't know how things were, we don't
understand why anti-trust and food protections laws are still on the books.

That said, the WSJ article is pay-walled. The introduction makes me think it's
to do with Hick's new book "Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women
Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing".

It might instead cover something else, and I'm simply out of the loop.

~~~
dominotw
>I don't understand your last line. Historians dig up skeletons all the time.
(As, literally, do archeologists.) Surely you aren't suggesting that
historians stop what they are doing?

Quoting an analysis from the past, saying situation is still the same in top
tech companies and implying that current situation is due to "men pushing
women out" . He even quotes an internal google memo that says " women overall
are biologically less suited to programming" as an example of men today bent
on pushing women out. Hope you see the controversy part.

Surely you can see this article is not purely historical curiosity and not at
all like an article about history of food safety conditions.

~~~
eesmith
I have now read the article thanks to merricksb.

This is not due to "an analysis from the past" but to a recent analysis of the
past. Hicks' book just came out.

What do you mean by "still the same"? Hicks describes situations in the 1960s
and 1970s which don't exist now, like women being forced out the company if
they get married, having babies in secret so they don't get fired, and
managers refusing to structure things so that men work under women.

Clearly that's not "still the same" in modern work environments, and Mims
isn't trying to say those conditions are the same. It seems he's saying that
there's still a problem with sexism in the computer industry. I don't think
that's controversial, and it's not incompatible with your statement that it's
the best time to be a women in this industry.

The most controversial point seems to be the statement that "simply educating
more women and minorities to be engineers won’t solve the problem" \- an
argument that the new historical study supports.

What is the skeleton that should not be dug up?

~~~
dominotw
> It seems he's saying that there's still a problem with sexism in the
> computer industry. I don't think that's controversial

Thats precisely what is controversial. Infact, 'sexism in the computer
industry' is one the most controversial topic on HN. Why do you think this
article getting flipped between flagged/unflagged status if its not
controversial.

I agree that its still a problem, controversial part is this, sexists are a
problem not "men".

> an argument that the new historical study supports.

But you say this "Mims isn't trying to say those conditions are the same." if
conditions aren't they same how does the study support it?

You are saying variables for the experiment aren't the same but experiment
will yield the same results regardless.

~~~
eesmith
Then I'm back to not understanding what you meant by "create some controversy
where there is none".

What is the non-controversial topic you think was raised/created by this
piece, which it should not have done?

If I understand your last comment, you would be happier with the title "The
First Women in Tech Didn't Leave, Sexist Men Pushed Them Out"?

That somehow seems worse.

Saying "Sexists" or "Sexist People" would be less correct, as sexist women -
and certainly there were many - didn't have the managerial power to do the
pushing in the British computing field during the 1960s and 1970s.

~~~
dominotw
> That somehow seems worse.

Why?

> What is the non-controversial topic you think was raised/created by this
> piece, which it should not have done?

I think I already addressed this with my last comment. Saying historical
context is still true and implying solutions won't work because of something
that happened decades ago.

> simply educating more women and minorities to be engineers won’t solve the
> problem - an argument that the new historical study supports.

> Mims isn't trying to say those conditions are the same.

Don't those statements contradict each other?

~~~
eesmith
As far as I can tell, you are picking at a small part of the topic. I think
you are making the "not all men" argument.

I really don't care to discuss it any more. I found the underlying historical
research quite interesting and insightful. While your original comment, even
after I finally was able to read the article, made it sound like you objected
to the "digging up of skeletons" that Hicks did.

I think it's instead that you disagree with the shallow interpretation that
some WSJ commenter made. _shrug_. Okay, great. I still think it's worthwhile
to dig up skeletons.

> Don't those statements contradict each other?

No. "It's the best time ever to be a Native American", because (for example)
the US government no longer forces them to send their children to Indian
schools where they aren't allowed to speak their language. But it's still not
great to be a Native American compared to other peoples, for a large number of
metrics.

~~~
dominotw
>I really don't care to discuss it any more.

ok i understand. thanks for engaging.

------
merricksb
Non-paywall archive:

[http://archive.is/iengE](http://archive.is/iengE)

~~~
tarboreus
Don't do this if you want it to stick around.

