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0 pointsorwin4y ago0 comments

I'm not sure about that, i've hear Professor Emeritus Mallard talk about his youth in the genetical field and the first use of computers to assist geneticists, he told me that he basically never saw men doing computer work, and that changed in the 80s, along with the culture.

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twic4y ago

The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women.

Then we got 8-bit microcomputers in every home, and operating a computer became a technical hobby, so ideally suited to boys.

The generation of boys growing up playing with computers, and girls not playing with computers, swamped any existing biases in the industry.

I wonder if the communist countries had the former phase, but because not so many homes had computers, not the latter.

notanzaiiswear4y ago

How many women were in electronics? I think the 8 Bit Homecomputer thing grew out of the electronics hobby, not office computers.

zajio1am4y ago

> The story i've heard is that the olden days, operating a computer was seen as clerical work, just like being a secretary, so ideally suited to women.

The fact is that in the old days, there really was plenty of clerical work around computers that just disappeared. Like rewritting data to punched cards and swapping wheels with punched tapes. My grandmother worked in 'data-processing facility' in a communist country, the facility employed many women, but they were (from whay i heard) essentially clerical positions without much CS/EE knowledge.

TheOtherHobbes4y ago

There were a lot of women in computing in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they've mostly been forgotten by the "Women don't really like this stuff" crowd.

OJFord4y ago

Were they 'into' it though, or did the nature of the secretarial work they were doing change? At least as I understand it, that was predominantly (of course there were exceptions, and female scientists, etc.!) the reason for the rise and fall of it.

I'm not arguing for or against '"Women don't really like this stuff"' - I'm just saying an example against it needs to be women liking this stuff, not merely doing this stuff.

WalterBright4y ago

I never encountered any in the 70s.

wheelinsupial4y ago

Apparently the amount of women in computer science majors peaked in the early-80s around 36-37%: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

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