History, Gender and Computing (or why is it always "the tech GUY")

This summer I attended a History, Gender and Computing Conference at the University of Minnesota (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~tmisa//gender/). While I was there covering the story for my internship at a freelance journalism firm, I was instantly gripped by the talks and presentations from some of the brightest minds in computer studies and mechanics.

First came the astonishing statistics: in 1984 the proportion of women awarded Bachelors Degree's in Computer Science was 37%. But since that peak the numbers have been decreasing and in 2004 only 25% of those degrees were awarded to women. At a time when women are increasingly making their mark in every other scientific profession, computer science is lagging behind. All other STEM courses have seen a steady increase in female graduates but the numbers in computer science are actually falling.

Caroline Hayes, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, put it succinctly in her presentation: ““In 1974 it [Computer Science] was an esoteric field graduating less than 5,000 Bachelors of Science. Thirty-plus years later it has become a popular profession having international economic importance, graduating almost 60,000 bachelors in 2004. However, Computer Science has experienced growing pains, particularly with respect to the representation of women”

The second notable presentation concerned the history of women in computing. The first general purpose computer in history, The ENIAC, had many women programmers on board. Yet even these extraordinary women are misrepresented. While their male colleagues are referred by name, the women are given short shrift and collectively referred to as 'the ENIAC girls'. The media at time even completely neglected to mention them, photographs of the programmers were actually cropped to include only the males.

The real kick in the teeth is that the original “computer's” were women! The word was used to describe women who would compute numbers and physically do the data entry work before a mechanical computer was ever built.

The final, and most interesting, presentation concerned the role of advertising in creating gender inequalities. Men and women occupy different roles in computer adverts. For example, men are usually shown sitting next to computer and using a phone or in a relaxed posture with a single finger on the mouse. Men are rarely portrayed with two hands on the keyboard because that is, in conventional thought, a 'womans job'.

As another visual division of labor, women are typically shown doing the manual labor of printing while men are doing the actual creation. Printers and women have a curios connection in advertisement. Printers are advertised with photographs of attractive and scantily clad women being printed out in beautiful colors from the printers.

The objective of engendering a computer in this way is to divide it among male and female. Women are kept at a distance by relating them to peripheral devices (printers and keyboards for example), while the heart of the computer, the hard drive, is reserved for the 'intelligent' male.