Whirlwind Computer, 1951
The article,
Innovators Assemble: Ada Lovelace, Walter Isaacson, and the Superheroines of Computing
featured in the latest online issue of the Communications of the ACM got me to thinking…
What’s keeping girls out of computing today?
I invite you to consider two differences between the social circumstances under which the historical female programmers/operators in the article got into computing and the path we are encouraging girls to follow today. Although Lovelace is an exception, most of the war-years computer women had already left school before they started to work with machines. They may have demonstrated math or mechanical ability earlier but they received their computer training on the job. There were no computer classes in high schools, colleges or universities. (Lovelace was tutored privately so she, too, did not learn math in a crowded classroom).
Fast forward to today and our campaigns to get girls into coding. To qualify for a job in this field, girls will have had to brave co-ed classrooms with cliques of boys who pick on geeky girls and cliques of non-geeky girls who are likely to be even more punishing. The pressure against geekiness was even present, although probably less harsh, during my own personal experience in an all girls private high-school.
Boys still on one side, girls on the other
At the 1979 computer literacy project, ComputerTownUSA!, initiated by Bob Albrecht and Ramon Zamora, we found that we had to plan “girls only” events to keep the boys from crowding the girls away from the keyboard. This says nothing about aptitude for the task but does suggest that some “affirmative action” is necessary to create an environment in which most girls will be willing to learn computing.
A second difference in social context is the war effort during the 1940s. Then, women moved into many male-dominated occupations and were considered patriots because the boys were at the front.
It was an era of full-employment when all hands (and minds) were needed regardless of gender. Today’s climate of unemployment and downward wage pressure amplifies competition which sometime emerges as sexist rationale. Those who dominate a field, in this case, white males, are likely to use any excuse to make the classroom and workplace inhospitable to competitors. Highlighting historic women technologists and contemporary female role models can go a long way toward encouraging today’s girls to aspire to STEM careers. In addition, we need to create work environments where boys and men, who are still brought up with an ethic that they should be bringing home the bacon, are not moved or permitted to harass girls and women in order to protect their own status.
Patriots.
Of course, this essay doesn’t solve the problem. But we do an injustice to young women if we use historical figures to encourage them to enter the fray and don’t point out that they face some significantly different challenges from their forebears.
I’d like to hear your ideas about how we can get more girls and women involved in the creative side of computing and even whether you think this is a good idea. The form below will help continue the conversation.