Comments on: Women in computing

By: Empowered Bitch

Empowered Bitch — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:41:52 +0000

“I couldn’t help but think that the songs for karaoke were not randomly selected as I listened to people sing the words to “I’m a Barbie girl” and “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover”.” Did you know that the DJ (male) initially nixed the Bitch song? A protest to the Google staff quickly got that fixed :)

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:49:47 +0000

> What’s really disturbing about > women in computing is what appears > to be the downward trend: Robert Morgan at Washington University in St. Louis was doing extensive research on that topic for the NSF in the early 1990s. I don’t know if he ever got anything published though. If interested you might want to follow up. Cranky

By: Christina Brando

Christina Brando — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 21:48:22 +0000

What's really disturbing about women in computing is what appears to be the downward trend: "Although more undergraduates in general are getting degrees in computer science, the percentage of women leaving school with that specialty dropped from 37 percent in 1985 to 28 percent in 2001." (More here) Anybody got an explanation?

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 21:33:46 +0000

It reminded me of my college years – having attended a women’s college – and what a blast you could have putting a group of women in a room with great music. Aah—- so the reason the women team on The Apprentice is constantly infighting is the lack of great music :-)

By: VJ

VJ — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:21:12 +0000

That’s Admiral Grace Hopper to you nimrods!

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:05:29 +0000

I work at the “dull” end of computing. Application development & support. I’ve been doing it for 34 years. I don’t have a computer sciece degree (there was only Manchester offering it when I graduated) and it’s not really necessary for what I do. The proportion of women in this area in my experience – and I’ve worked at over 70 sites in the UK - peaked about 1972, dropped until 1998 or so and then rose slightly. A lot of “computing” these days ia Excel work, which I don’t see. I think there are more women there. But not by much.

By: clew

clew — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 07:55:41 +0000

An earlier analogy is telegraphers; women made a surprising number of the first telegraphers. Some ran the line into their dainty parlor, some rode the rails to work in tiny stations in the Wild West. Romance! Movies! Labor fights over deskilling! From, e.g., My Sisters Telegraphic, Jepsen; gently referred to in Pratchett's Going Postal.

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:41:42 +0000

The weird thing about the glass ceiling for women in computing is that if you look back at the 1940s and 1950s 50-60% of the pioneers were women. This was probably a result of the women mathematicians in World War II being pushed off to the “less important” areas such as computation while the men handled the “big jobs”, but it is true and remained so until the mid-1970s. But at that point (1972 or so) the original women retired from the field and were not replaced by other women, leaving the situation we have today. Cranky