• 1 Post
  • 24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 7th, 2023

help-circle











  • 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.