using a computer traditionally was seen as a secretary job, so it was often dominated by women. its only as of post consumer computer events where a lot more males went into the field due to the large market it offers came in.
My mom was a systems programmer who used assembly language and built a lot of the banking infrastructure!
Originally, programming was actually a woman dominated field because it was considered a subset of secretary work and “beneath men” (it wasn’t for a good reason).
If you watch the recent cummerbatch movie about Turing the eagle eyed observer will notice that nearly everyone who actually interacts with the computer software is a woman.
Not to turn this into a sociology discussion, but for anyone unaware: this is a fairly common pattern.
Women often pioneer fields like this, but as soon as it becomes seen as something “important” out “respectable” then suddenly it becomes male dominated.
The opposite also happens, where as society deems something as unimportant, a male dominated field will become female dominant - see teaching for an unfortunate example of a field that used to be highly paid and respected, and is now largely looked down on.
Sorry, don’t mean to go off on a tangent - it just bugs me and I think more people should be aware of it.
Beer brewing was originally a field dominated by women.
The presitege associated with a position can also change the expected gender. Women traditionally cooked meals at home but “Chefs” are predominately male, especially famous or celebrated Chefs.
You can google “women in computing” for more details, or check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing - it’s amazing how much women contributed to this field and how little known that appears to be. (I only learned about it a few years ago myself.)
But the gist is:
Early on (i.e. the 1940s and 50s), men thought the prestige and honor was in building the giant machines (which back then could fill a classroom or more). Actually programming them was considered easier, “just like following a recipe”, so women got jobs as “computers” who did this part. To quote that wikipedia article: Designing the hardware was “men’s work” and programming the software was “women’s work.”
Fast forward to the 1970s and people had started realizing that programming was actually hard, and so it was promoted as a field boys should get educated in, while girls were encouraged to instead become nurses and teachers and such.
Margaret Elaine Hamilton (née Heafield; born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo program. She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports, about sixty projects, and six major programs. She invented the term “software engineering”, stating “I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process.”
On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from president Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo Moon missions.
Huh, didn’t know about her! She sounds like a badass lady!
People might be more familiar with this viral picture as well, if not the name.
“Margaret Hamilton shown in 1969 standing beside listings of the software developed by her and her team for the Apollo program’s Lunar Module and Command Module.”
Now you got me interested! Please explain 👀
Not only were the programmers women, but so were the computers.
using a computer traditionally was seen as a secretary job, so it was often dominated by women. its only as of post consumer computer events where a lot more males went into the field due to the large market it offers came in.
My mom was a systems programmer who used assembly language and built a lot of the banking infrastructure!
Originally, programming was actually a woman dominated field because it was considered a subset of secretary work and “beneath men” (it wasn’t for a good reason).
If you watch the recent cummerbatch movie about Turing the eagle eyed observer will notice that nearly everyone who actually interacts with the computer software is a woman.
I have infinite respect for anyone that professionally works with assembly. That shit is wizardry compared to today’s higher level languages.
I think assembly was easier back then. Some architectures still are. But many architectures like x86 got incredibly complicated.
Not to turn this into a sociology discussion, but for anyone unaware: this is a fairly common pattern.
Women often pioneer fields like this, but as soon as it becomes seen as something “important” out “respectable” then suddenly it becomes male dominated.
The opposite also happens, where as society deems something as unimportant, a male dominated field will become female dominant - see teaching for an unfortunate example of a field that used to be highly paid and respected, and is now largely looked down on.
Sorry, don’t mean to go off on a tangent - it just bugs me and I think more people should be aware of it.
It’s a good tangent, and they should.
It also did happen in other fields in astronomy or genetics pretty early on.
Somebody once described her team as “Young, motivated, highly educated and otherwise basically unemployable”.
Guess it helps that sorting through myriads of stars or kernels of corn was often not seen as prestigious enough
Beer brewing was originally a field dominated by women.
The presitege associated with a position can also change the expected gender. Women traditionally cooked meals at home but “Chefs” are predominately male, especially famous or celebrated Chefs.
You can google “women in computing” for more details, or check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing - it’s amazing how much women contributed to this field and how little known that appears to be. (I only learned about it a few years ago myself.)
But the gist is:
Early on (i.e. the 1940s and 50s), men thought the prestige and honor was in building the giant machines (which back then could fill a classroom or more). Actually programming them was considered easier, “just like following a recipe”, so women got jobs as “computers” who did this part. To quote that wikipedia article: Designing the hardware was “men’s work” and programming the software was “women’s work.”
Fast forward to the 1970s and people had started realizing that programming was actually hard, and so it was promoted as a field boys should get educated in, while girls were encouraged to instead become nurses and teachers and such.
Ada Lovelace
Margaret Hamilton!
Huh, didn’t know about her! She sounds like a badass lady!
People might be more familiar with this viral picture as well, if not the name.
“Margaret Hamilton shown in 1969 standing beside listings of the software developed by her and her team for the Apollo program’s Lunar Module and Command Module.”
I have her Lego set :)
For anyone unaware, Ada Lovelace created the first programming language - all before a computer even existed. Absolute Chad of a woman.
The only legitimate child of notorious poet philanderer Lord Byron. I love her whole story.
There’s an awesome Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff podcast episode on Ada Lovelace!
The person that created the first version of assembly was a woman I think!
Do you mean Grace Hopper, who wrote the first assembler?
Grace Hopper invented the some of the first “high level” languages, FLOW-MATIC and COBOL. I’m not sure about the first assembler.
At the time, she called it a “compiler”, but its function was more akin to what we’d call a linker or assembler today.
In addition to other comments,read about Ada Lovelace. She was brilliant, she wrote the first program, and done so before we had computers!
I woman programmer helped get humanity to the moon.