The First Women in Tech Didn't Leave -- Men Pushed Them Out (wsj.com) 427
An anonymous reader writes: A column on the Wall Street Journal argues that sexism in the tech industry is as old as the tech industry itself. At its genesis, computer programming faced a double stigma -- it was thought of as menial labor, like factory work, and it was feminized, a kind of "women's work" that wasn't considered intellectual (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). In the U.K., women in the government's low-paid "Machine Operator Class" performed knowledge work including programming systems for everything from tax collection and social services to code-breaking and scientific research. Later, they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married. Today, in the U.S., about a quarter of computing and mathematics jobs are held by women, and that proportion has been declining over the past 20 years. A string of recent events suggest the steps currently being taken by tech firms to address these issues are inadequate.
the first women in tech.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Considering they are talking about post war era changes after WWII the women in question would have to be over 90.
Where I work there is no shortage of women in tech so every time I see something like this I wonder if it's blown out of proportion or if I just happen to work in place that isn't average.
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Possibly. You can recognise them by their smaller ears.
Re:the first women in tech.... (Score:5, Insightful)
probably are retired actually
Honestly, quite a few women that I worked with left the field to become stay at home Mom's. Usually, the husband was the bread winner so when it came to the weighing of super expensive daycare and wages, it was purely a rational decision to optimize income/expenses of the household. That's something that doesn't get reported enough. A lot of women either don't want to go into STEM or don't want to stay in those positions for various reasons that don't have to do with discrimination.
Re:the first women in tech.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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we are agreed that IT doesn't pay well enough
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Well, except in the IT field, if you are out of the business for 4-6 years, then you can't really reenter again very easily. Your skills unless you at the top of your field when you left are out of date. Most industries aren't that brutal.
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Honestly, quite a few women that I worked with left the field to become stay at home Mom's
Blasphemy! Women are supposed to have successful careers sticking it to The Man, not spending their time helping raise the next generation! They're wasting their talent if they're staying home teaching their children to read, write, and be responsible individuals!
/sarc
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Plus the long hours. I haven't worked with a single woman yet that was willing to work Seattle Hundreds. The women I work with work about half of the hours of the men. There's a reason they move to other jobs like program or project management.
Re: the first women in tech.... (Score:3)
Solidarity, my brother. It's time for you and your coworkers to form a union. Strike over your inhuman working conditions! Seize the means of production,and regain your self-respect.
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Having worked in "tech" since the 70s, I started out working with three women in a computer repair shop in the USAF. I dated a female software engineer (a def contractor), and her best friend was another female programmer. Once I got out of the military and landed my first commercial job (I'm still there after 36 yrs), about half of the software folks, including a director, were female. That percentage has dwindled over the years, in spite of our constant attempts to hire more women...I've personally hir
Re: the first women in tech.... (Score:3)
You know startups and Silicon Valley are only a small part of the IT world?
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Might it have been different if the women fought in the trenches next to men? That's a serious question. There is no measure that you can put in place that equals that experience on the whole. Survivors coming back knew that they'd left their jobs expecting to return to them if they survived and I'll bet that nearly all of the men collectively understood what they'd been through together in defeating the Japanese & Nazis. I think when women are forced into war as men were during WWII through the sel
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes it was, you, you *young person*. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know because I still remember a time when there were women programmers around who started out on keypunch machines.
Picture yourself spending all day typing COBOL programs into a keypunch machine. Back in the 60s and 70s that's pretty much tantamount to picturing yourself as a woman [google.com]. Don't you think you'd figure that programming thing out, particularly if you were a smart girl?
Another thing you don't remember, there was a time when being able to type carried a professional stigma. Men didn't type. If you were a woman applying for a job you'd automatically be given a typing test. This was true as late as the 70s, when my wife (a physics undergrad student) was looking for summer jobs in science. She had to pass a typing test, but ended up writing Fortran programs which helped design what became the Chandra X-Ray observatory.
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How many of the have jobs *copying programs* from handwritten forms into machine readable form?
None. That's why this particular career path doesn't exist any longer.
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But it's quite plausible for someone who assembles cars to make a career shift into doing body work. That would be a much more apt analogy. Back in the 70s, when I first learned to program, things were quite a bit different than they are today. You didn't have to know nearly so much.
The volume of knowledge in the field has grown; even for relatively low-level jobs. Imagine: most programs back then were very small, and largely consisted of reading an input stream like a tape file and producing either anoth
Re:Yes it was, you, you *young person*. (Score:4, Informative)
To answer your question, they were typing the text of programs in languages like COBOL, which weren't quite the machine-oriented gibberish you use to program a calculator. A program might look like this:
Begin.
SORT WorkFile ON ASCENDING KEY WStudentName
INPUT PROCEDURE IS GetMaleStudents
GIVING MaleStudentFile.
STOP RUN.
...
If you spent all day every day for a couple of months you'd have a pretty good intuitive grasp of the syntax rules of the language; and if you were of the right mentality it wouldn't be that hard to turn you into a programmer.
Compare the above to a calculator listing:
.3 STO .3 .1 STO .1 .0 STO .0 .2 STO .2
001- 42,21,11 f LBL A
002- 43 8 g RAD
003- 42 3 f !RAD
004- 44
005- 33 R#
006- 44
007- 33 R#
008- 44
009- 33 R#
010- 44
...
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They were 'computers' well before that.
By Computers I mean math execution units. IIRC It took thousands of person years of work to calculate the shape of the B-29's wings.
Stupid bean counters (Score:2)
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Except female managers are more likely to pay women less than male managers.
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The point was that if there is a large talent pool willing to work for less typically the industry will exploit this.
I guess indians and mexicans are fine to exploit but nobody would ever exploit a woman. Right?
Women are never exploited? Or is there some unaccounted for difference between exploiting Indians for tech work and Women for tech work?
This sexist drivel again (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does it need to be repeated every few days that discrimination is the only possible reason why there could ever be more men than women in a profession and that men are collectively guilty? Curiously, it is rarely seen as a problem when women form the majority in a profession.
Re:This sexist drivel again (Score:5, Insightful)
Because that's how manufactured narratives work.
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I dunno, why do you feel the need to repeat it every time?
Because TFA doesn't say that. Only you are saying that, and you should explain why you are trying to derail the debate with this false narrative.
Re:This sexist drivel again (Score:5, Insightful)
Elementary School Teacher
Nurse
Wait-Staff (paid more than cooks and dishwashers generally, for less hard work)
Vet Tech (nice job)
Office Admin (nice job)
Receptionist (nice easy job)
HR
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I take my cats to one. Well, I ring the surgery and book an appointment with "the vet" but it's mostly the bloke and not his female colleague.
Maybe she does dogs.
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A buddy of mine that worked construction was injured on the job and had to go on workman's compensation. He was paid by the state to take computer classes. He took some office administration classes (word processing & excel). I explained to him that with his background and mindset that he'd likely get in trouble with the ladies, that they'd rip him a new one, that even though he didn't intend to he'd be interpreted as a sexual harasser. Needless to say he stopped after finishing those classes and be
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Teachers.
Mine were, anyway...
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I'm not threatened by the handful of women in the tech workforce having a hand up in their carreers even if it's not totally "fair". There are admittedly so few that it's silly to get upset.
I am threatened by SJW callout culture and people who claim I need a scientifically proven don't-rape seminar. When it seems every self-declared male ally turns out to be a full out serial rapist it makes me think maybe these people are rent seeking liars.
Excuse me if the situation makes me suspicious and defensive.
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I am threatened by SJW callout culture and people who claim I need a scientifically proven don't-rape seminar.
You're objecting to both sensitivity training seminars AND to calling out known harassers. I agree with you on the first one, you can't train someone to not be a sleazeball. But the second one?
What solutions DO you propose if not shaming predators who are caught? Prayer?
When it seems every self-declared male ally turns out to be a full out serial rapist it makes me think maybe these people are rent seeking liars.
How many self-declared male allies have turned out to be serial rapists? It seems like you're pretending the effect is the cause: you don't like "Social justice warriors" so you're constructing a narrative here.
Excuse me if the situation makes me suspicious and defensive.
You didn't mention anythin
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It's worrying that this story has been tagged "cultural Marxism" and "fake news". Someone apparently feels so threatened by what is largely considered an uncontroversial historical fact that they think it's an attempt to destroy our culture.
I like to think that stuff like that is mostly the work of paid shills.
Think about that. Do they think that remembering things used to be worse will harm us, that we are that fragile? Or do they want to white-wash the past so they can go back to the 1950 model society without resistance?
I think we want to view the history of women in tech through shit covered lenses. I always told people that computers were always women, maybe I just liked the way it sounded but while looking up historical programmer salaries I stumbled across something at nasa that says that isn't really true. I'm uncomfortable that I can think of women who would fling accusations of sexism in my workplace that would get taken very seriously. But f
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Hire more women will solve the problem? Really? You can hire more women all you want. If you want you should. If it is a legal obligation you should. However retention is about performance. You should not fear firing someone because of gender when the issue is about performance, but good luck with that.
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FUD travels the globe a million times faster than the truth.
Yes, for instance: innocent men are being slandered by evil femnazis. That's spreading like wildfire here.
First men in nursing? First men in Schoolteaching? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did they get pushed out? 'cause 91% female doesn't seem like that's any kind of normal distribution. So, why aren't there more male nurses? If I use the current media-logic, it must be because women are pushing them out, sexually harassing them, and basically being general pieces of shit. So, because men don't show much interest in nursing, is it because women are playing dirty?
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No, usually the bullying is by assholes full of stereotypes. Like you.
Uh-huh. Facts are stereotypes huh? Why oh why are nursing organizations trying to put a hard brake on the entire thing and stop female nurses bullying male nurses then. Oh right, let's pick one then: Because that's imaginary or because you have no idea.
It isn't the other nurses doing the bullying, it is the doctors and patients.
No? You should go let them know that, especially with the nurses who've been bullied out by other nurses for not being the right gender.
Was their thought inaccurate? (Score:3)
As government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married.
Before you can claim it as merely a "then-common" belief that women might leave as soon as they were married, you FIRST need to prove it wrong.
What data is available, and what does the data for that time period say about a majority of Women staying in and remaining committed or LEAVING professions in general after getting married?
For all I know at that time that WAS then the norm for women to be expected to change their priorities and leave profession after having kids, AND all of that perceived stuff might have been fully justified.
That MIGHT even be the norm today that the Man or the Woman might abandon their field following marriage+kids, and then it could be reasonably regarded to maintain a STABLE profession to seek the character and type of candidates that are most likely to be COMMITTED and not leave, for instance; single people who will sign an agreement that they won't date or marry for 10, 20 years, Etc. Etc.
Re:Was their thought inaccurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because how dare you have priorities other than to serve the corporation. In tech, most of the marriage/kid arguments affecting employee turnover today are bullshit because even the males, if they are any good, move companies every 2-4 years anyway. That's no different a turnover time than someone getting married and having kids, if they decide to leave the workforce. If anything, I believe women are more likely to be committed to a single employer than their male counterparts, making any retention arguments not only bullshit but, the complete opposite of the truth.
Note: I'm referring to modern women in tech, not the the 1950s-1980s.
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Yes, because how dare you have priorities other than to serve the corporation.
No... it's fine. You just need to understand if you DO expect to have other priorities, then you're not the kind of person for certain senior positions.
In tech, most of the marriage/kid arguments affecting employee turnover today
are bullshit because even the males, if they are any good, move companies every 2-4 years anyway.
Actually, that DEPENDS on the job AND how senior the employee is. Principal engineers at a compan
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As an aside, I wonder if this could have something to do with women making less, too. Switching jobs or employers tends to accelerate salary growth so if they aren't switching, they are probably only getting measely ~1%-3% increases each year, instead of the leaps you might get by leaving one company as a developer and joining another as an architect, for example. If women really do tend to stay
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Note: I'm referring to modern women in tech, not the the 1950s-1980s.
Which is the period the article's claims are about ...
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But even if they really did leave as soon as they were married it was only because men (and white men at that!) expected them to!
(AmiMoJo is on holiday).
The article is pretty wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Programming work was never considered menial even when it was relegated to women. COMPUTER work, that is being a small part of a biological Arithmetic Unit was considered menial. Indeed it was, assembly line work doing basic arithmetic, it was in every way factory work that wouldn't ruin a pretty face. Many women used to computer revolution to take their experience doing this sort of work to become programmers which were always respected.
2) Machine operators and system operators were generally relatively low skilled workers compared to programmers. They would actually operate the computer in the days when most people couldn't use it themselves. Most of these jobs eventually were taken over by the helpdesk. Once again a deservedly menial job.
. Today, in the U.S., about a quarter of computing and mathematics jobs are held by women, and that proportion has been declining over the past 20 years.
Here is where the intentionally deceptive author shines through. 20 years ago was the PEAK of women in tech, when they were nearly at parity with men. Many people have taken guesses at what pushed women out 20 years ago.. My favorite explanations are that this correlated with the rise of the autistic man child nerd archetype in the collective conscious. But the best I've heard is that the dot-com bubble attracted greedy assholes to the field and women don't want to deal with that shit.
I find this highly believable for the reason I believe BLM. It's a problem that I can relate to and accept may even be worse for the person making the claim. The part that sucks is that the sort of PHB MBA shithead that ruined everything will be the first one to demand a comprehensive code of conduct, and comprehensive training package to teach our fragile engineers and scientists not to rape.
It's often the female version of the men that originally drove women out in the first place. Except they get the be the toxic boss and victim at the same time. There will be no scandal if their abuses are brought to light.
Re:The article is pretty wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
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Early computer programming was considered to be secretarial work, and fairly menial. Like women would be expected to know how to type and do basic typewriter maintenance, or operate the phone system, or run the filing system, it was natural that they then started programming too.
Back then there wasn't that much difference between operating and programming. The most advanced UI was a teletype that took abbreviated, unintuitive commands and spat back coded messages.
I love it when (Score:2)
They left (Score:2)
time to cap OT and maybe lower 40 hours down a bit (Score:2)
time to cap OT and maybe lower 40 hours down a bit?
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Found the Frenchman!
(more seriously, I'm all in favor of that)
Problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly is the problem supposed to be?
No one wants to train and invest in people who are going to flake out. What matters is not their gender, but their behavior. The behavior was the consideration, not the gender.
These gender war baiting articles are starting to piss me off. Slashdot is controlled by social justice warriors.
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Nah. Slashdot is controlled by people who need clicks. And anything that ruffles some feathers and creates clicks is great. Trump, Global Warming, Gender Wars...
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These gender war baiting articles are starting to piss me off. Slashdot is controlled by social justice warriors.
Along with most other media sources ...
Well, what did we think all those universities were going to graduate, given what they were teaching?
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Since you asked, the issue is that assuming women will "flake out" isn't fair, and that the lack of support for mothers means that if they do get pregnant it's more likely they won't be able to return to work.
Maybe you don't care about that, but you should at least worry about the potential for a falling population or well educated people with good jobs not having kids.
Rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects
And please why that didn't happen in medicine, for example? Or in law practice, or in accounting, or in social services, veterinaries... Somehow the law faculties were less hostile to the sudden influx of females? Allow me to be skeptical of that.
We humans are really bad at getting to grips with complex processes, and are much more comfortable with a narrative, that simplifies the process in a couple of rough brush strokes that are easily consumable. Much better if the "story" has a bad guy against which personal irritations of one's daily life can find a target. To recognize that the playing board of society is more or less fair, and that sexes gravitate to the jobs that better fit them, taking into account all kind of conditions, is probably too much to ask.
But still! Nevertheless! To choose precisely tech among all fields, for that inane tale! I cannot think of an area where the last decades have been more dynamic, the demand for talent so pressing, the barriers of entry so low, and the competence so fierce. Does anybody really think that the under-representation of the females (never enough regretted by the males, I feel compelled to add) in this field is some sort of Machiavellian plot?
Had Google be better served by a mixed team, would they have renounced to it for...exactly what? And then they would have their lunch eaten by Bing, that had in the meantime renounced to the loggia's precepts and admitted many women to the development team. Netscape rests in the pantheon of heroes, because they could have been saved by a timely infusion of the female of the species, but they chose to sink with honor instead of selling themselves to the enemy. And when everybody was building the next wonderful thing in Silicon Valley, venture capitalists sent promising teams packing if they could smell just a bit of perfume in the presentation, just because they were not really in the business of getting rich, but part of a global sinister conspiracy,
Utter nonsense.
SOME of it was menial work (Score:2)
Ladies who entered data on punch cards or stitched core ROMs were not programmers, although they were participating in something important that deserves recognition. On the other hand, ENIAC programming was fairly high skill, requiring understanding of mathematics to wire the function tables. Still, it's misleading to say that men were not interested in computer science back then. Hardware design of ENIAC was done by (mostly?) men. Now hardware design is not a major source of CS employment, so similar men a
Why don't /. editors respect women's choices? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't /. editors respect women's choices?
Claim:
The First Women in Tech Didn't Leave -- Men Pushed Them Out
Passing reference to reality:
women [...] leave as soon as they [get] married [or became pregnant].
You see, if you just ignore all the misandry (as well as heterophobia, anti-white racism, anti-conservatism, anti-Christianity, and anti-other-traditional-aspects-of-the-west) and read between the lines, you'll see the truth. These social justice cretins have to mention reality, however briefly, in order to have a shred of truth in their anti-west drivel.
Women are free to work in whatever field they want. If not a lot of them want to work in tech, then fine. That's THEIR choice and I respect it. Why don't SJWs respect it?
We humans are still mostly animals, that's why (Score:2)
Sign.... (Score:2)
Nonsense (Score:2)
Now the SJW swamp donkey (feminists) types may not, but no one wants to hire someone who is a lawsuit waiting to happen and that smells strongly of cats.
Freedom of Choice? (Score:3)
Just out of curiosity, what do slashdotters think about men being forced to work with women?
It would seem, judging by things like history books, and the biggest news stories of 2017, that a lot of men don't like working with women. So why are we forcing them to? Is there something wrong with a group, even a large group of men wanting a life where they don't work with women?
Maybe they simply aren't comfortable around girls? Maybe they want to go home to their wives having not spent all day with other women? Maybe they feel overpowered by women in the work place, or maybe they feel like every comment they make to or around women to be a liability in a way very different than comments with male colleagues?
The point is that it doesn't matter what the reason. Why are we forcing men to work with women? What's wrong with the very simple: this is a men-only workplace?
I understand that twenty years ago, that would have meant women couldn't be hired. But these days, there are plenty of female-run companies, and plenty of what-would-have-been-called-progressive companies who enjoy women in the workplace.
So is it time to drop the affirmative action of requiring men to accept women in the workplace?
Today, going forward, what would happen if we were to start allowing companies to limit their workforce to men-only, purely because their workforce desires such?
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Well I'm forcing my daughter into programming... (Score:5, Funny)
She wants to go into Family Medicine, and has no aptitude for computers. But I've firmly told her "No! You've internalized the patriarchy in thinking you don't want be a programmer! Now listen to your father and spend your life chained to a terminal like I have!" /s
Misandry (Score:2)
You can't even talk about that.
I though equality was more about getting equal than getting even.
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It's actually about neither. From what I can tell, it's about getting stuff for free.
Quite seriously. If you want equality, you will have no bigger ally than me. If you want preferential treatment, you won't find a bigger enemy. Because then you're pretty much the kind of asshole you accuse me to be: Someone who thinks that they should get something for free just because they have the "right" gender, race, sexual preference or place of birth.
Wow, really? (Score:2)
There was gender discrimination in the past?
Next thing you'll tell us that we thought black people can be owned, right? Or trying to ease us slowly into it and didn't want to drop that bombshell yet? Hope I didn't spoil your surprise.
not a possible conclusion (Score:2)
Not a possible conclusion when dealing with wicked-problem systems theory. Not even a possible provisional conclusion.
Possible conclusion: We have yet to see compelling evidence that recent steps taken by tech firms amount to a hill of beans. But that conclusion would be true of 99% of everything, 99% of all the time.
Sometimes with complex systems, there can be a brief flash of obviousness,
barefoot and pregnant (Score:2)
While is technology being singled out, when most of the 20th century was on board with woman mainly being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?
This was an official plank of conservative family values, necessary for the upholding of the fine social fabric, etc. etc. yada yada. I can't recall a time in my life where I didn't believe that women ought to be able to do whatever the hell they want, to the same extent as men. I was an attentive child. I remember much about the 1970s quite well.
However, I've nev
Nothing like revisionist history (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing like when a "generation removed" tries to teach a lesson to the people that lived it. It sends the wrong message to the generations that follow.
Most women thought, and openly expressed, openly mocked, computer use as being the domain of the nerd. As someone that actively encouraged women to become more involved I can say that the predominant attitude by them was that "computers are for nerds".
Men didn't make it too inviting, however that wasn't their responsibility. It wasn't their purview.
Granted men did create a highly competitive environment and this was filled with intimidation because the work was intimidating. It was. If someone wasn't able to embrace that they obviously wouldn't stick around, male or female. I'm sure the atmosphere created by this was intimidating to the point of being viewed as hostile by some. This intimidation didn't keep men from pursuing their goals.
I remember playing darts with a friend who was into computers. We were talking about Macintosh vs. DOS. I asked him how he got involved. He talked about his brother that worked for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He told me that he was writing drivers for some hardware component for the Macintosh. He told me his brother had taken some "obscure math" class in college and that ILM was looking for anyone that had that knowledge. This was when I lived in the heart of Silicon Valley so I had no reason to disbelieve his story.
Back in the early tech days competition was heavy and hard. People would enter and leave in droves. They'd enter because it was a new skills market and they'd leave as they failed to achieve or they burned out. I noted back then that so many left yet I stuck it out -- I didn't seem to burn out.
Learning technology is a very personal thing. I mean most of those that stayed with it were people that spent their nights and weekends learning everything they could. Their job didn't stop at the close of business. If you wanted to learn a new programming language -- the up and coming new one such as C or C++ or C# -- you traditionally built on your prior knowledge. It took months if not years to learn these languages adequately, and that didn't always happen by going back to school. In fact, I'd venture a say that it rarely happened that way. I can't say what occurred at the level of the executives, but I can say that it wasn't likely that anyone was going to achieve the level of executive unless they had an intense indepth of knowledge in the field.
If you weren't into software then you were into hardware and if you weren't into hardware or software you were into support. It took years to learn to design hardware, and that most often required a degree in electrical engineering and/or math. So, if you weren't going for a degree to develop computer hardware and you weren't developing software then you were supporting infrastructure and/or the users. That took a broad understanding of multiple areas. You needed to know how the hardware basically functioned and you needed to know how software was supposed to work more than you needed to know how a specific piece of software/program worked. For instance, you needed to know the idea behind word processing versus knowing a specific word processor. You needed to be able to look at a piece of software that you'd never seen before and know why it broke -- and you did know because you knew how software was supposed to work. None of these skills came over night. You needed to thoroughly indoctrinate yourself and you needed to be around others that didn't mislead you, around people that also knew their stuff, and if you couldn't put up with the competition you were shunned. If someone was able to deal with that then whether they were a man or a woman didn't matter.
I do remember many times where I heard a complaint that such and such wouldn't teach such and such a person. When asking about it I'd get a response that that person just didn't get it or took too much time away from what they were do
Perhaps, but maybe... (Score:3)
In the U.K., women in the government's low-paid "Machine Operator Class" performed knowledge work including programming systems for everything from tax collection and social services to code-breaking and scientific research. Later, they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married.
Perhaps, but aside from a dastardly evil plan to keep women out of advanced fields like programming, maybe - just maybe - at the end of WW2, when the boys came home, the women left the workplace and returned to being the homemakers they were before the war?
In 1945 the world was a much different place than it is today, don't Project today's motives on last century's actions.
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Why bother with details when the whole premise is bullshit?
Self Flagellation (Score:2, Insightful)
Just more Self Flagellation on the part of the SJW crowd.
You suck, I suck, we all suck. History is all about woman haters blah blah blah.
If we are going to go back in history to find reasons to bash men today, we can just right back to Eve and blame that bitch for getting us kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
Re:Self Flagellation (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, in my experience, it's mostly the women that suck. Some men, too, but they're kinda queer.
(go on and mod as you please, I got karma to burn and I simply could not let this joke pass)
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I'll be nicer. Most women were pushed out of tech by more competitive women who wanted their job, it's how it works. Sure, there'll be collusion in it, just the way it is. Most people do not want to be unemployed, most people want a job that pays well for not that physically hard work exposed to the weather et al and most people will attempt to establish ties with others that will get them that job and the most competitive will win and the least competitive will lose. There was also a strong tendency to fav
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Judging from the US TV rules, I learned that tits are not for little kids.
Re:This gunna be good (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of moronic bullshit, starting with "Editor's note: the link could be paywalled." No, asshole, you do know that the it is paywalled, that's why you were providing an alternate link. Why get all mealy-mouthed about it? WSJ is paywalled.
Then it blathers on about how it was written by a millennial without enough knowledge of cultural history to know that women usually did leave professional jobs after being married in those times. A few would try to keep the jobs and complain if they were forced out, but it was somewhat rare. It was only much later in the 70s and 80s when the demand from women to keep those jobs after marriage picked up; and the societal changes allowing it happened rapidly.
It wasn't normally government bureaucrats who were keeping married women out of the work force, it was either the women themselves, or their husbands, depending. They didn't anticipate women leaving those jobs after the war because they were uniquely sexist; women in those jobs also anticipating moving on to other things after the war in most cases.
You can always find the exceptions and trumpet their voices, but it doesn't always really explain what was going on in society. It is simply not the case that women were perfect and enlightened and without stereotypes, and the evil men were mean and held them down. That isn't how it was at all. In reality, men and women were both filled with the exact same gender stereotypes. Everybody was harmed by it. And a small minority outgrew the stereotypes together, and society was seen to have changed.
Re:This gunna be good (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the over/under on tech bros litigating every tiny, pedantic detail in TFA in order to make themselves feel better?
"Later, they would be pushed out of the field, as government leaders in the postwar era held a then-common belief that women shouldn't be allowed into higher-paid professions with long-term prospects because they would leave as soon as they were married."
If a company has to spend a considerable amount of time and money investing in something, only to find that there was a very high chance that the investment would not pay out in the long run, perhaps it shouldn't come as such a shock that companies started to make the decision to not take that chance.
What percentage of women did leave a job after getting married or having children 30+ years ago? Was it statistically proven that hiring women was deemed a considerable risk to the necessary investment?
And before you try and label this argument pedantic, keep in mind that from a purely business perspective this is standard risk analysis and ROI 101, and would logically apply to every business decision.
Re:This gunna be good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually a huge issue. If you really want equality and not just some token feelgood bullshit, let's start with eliminating "maternity" leave and turn it into "parental" leave, with mandatory equal times for husband and wife. As long as this ain't the case, there is actually a very real incentive for employers to prefer men over women, simply due to a lower chance of losing them for a few months or even years, depending on the country you're in.
Re: This gunna be good (Score:3)
My JP Morgan Chase offer, yesterday, included 4 mo parental leave for me (a man).
Re: This gunna be good (Score:4, Insightful)
Split evenly with your wife?
The core of the problem is not that you cannot volunteer to take a leave. What is required is mandatory 50:50 split. Else you will in most constellations end up with the woman taking the longer share and true equality is impossible because it is STILL preferable for the employer to employ a man because he is more likely to be available and not on leave.
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> Split evenly with your wife?
If I was to work there, how would they split the leave over someone who doesnt? Take a look at what the policy looks like, since it's been in the news a bit.
Re:This gunna be good (Score:4, Funny)
I believe the term is disputing. Litigating would be if we took it to the Male Privilege court. Then again if it went to the Male Privilege court we'd just say something like 'Your honour, the defendant has always been a bit high strung. Difficult. See you in the Men's Club after the case is dismissed? I've got a fine filly you might enjoy breaking in'.
And that would be that.
Re: This gunna be good (Score:4, Insightful)
> Gotta love the nerd rage. Just because your gross doesn't make discrimination okay.
How can you possibly be so ILLITERATE and post a response? Women self selected for this. They were NOT discriminated against. They CHOSE to avoid computing because of the exact social stigma pointed out in what you responded to.
This entire SJW nonsense is prefaced on the idea that personal choices equal "discrimination".
Pretty much every female in my (current) entire economic class dumps their corporate overlords because they have the means to do so. Can't say I blame them really.
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This has nothing to do with equality. That's why the term is used.
This is about an enforced notion of political correctness meant for public consumption. It's bullshit public virtue that doesn't reflect any reality. Outcomes differ because people choose to make different choices. They don't mindlessly follow the current orthodoxy.
Women actually have minds of their own. They exercise free will.
The SJW class objects to choices freely made by others that they don't approve of. Feminism has been pulling this cr
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Funny)
Please sir, be realistic, the only moon jobs are for "whalers on the moon" which is also a majority male enterprise.
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You noticed that too? The article talks about the stated rationale for certain policy decisions in the UK after WW II, then fast forwards to the present state of gender (sex?) imbalance in "tech" in the US, and then implies that the gross unfairness of the former is the reason for the latter. Perhaps, perhaps not. A little more data on both would be nice, and not conflating countries and cultures without demonstrating the connection.
Since my "fitness" to comment might be questioned... I'm a middle-aged
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Yep. this is why you see so many women in garbage collection. Oh wait...
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You are right, garbage collection is male-dominated.
We should get rid of Java and Go and replace it with C and C++ to restore balance.
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Seems feminism has forgotten Adm. Dr. Prof. Grace Hopper PhD I guess. :(
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Next you're going to tell me to "give communism a chance".
Marxism is characterized most simply by establishing artificial and false dichotomies and pitting the two sides against each other.
So yeah, that word means exactly what I think it means.
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This is not true the first women in tech were engineers who became famous. Adm. Grace Murray hopper worked right alongside Eckert and Mauchly on the ENIAC. Then she went on to invent the compiler.
Eckert and Mauchly's wives did a great deal of hardwiring and associated technical work and it was considered women's work but the notion what they did was considered menial is totally inaccurate.
The article and your post also completely misses that 20 years ago was the peak of women in tech, nearly at parity wi
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That's cause you're bragging about it.
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So... the #metoo movement is basically a bragging club? Is that what you're trying to tell us?
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History is going to be rewritten, like it or not. New term is herstory.
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Ada Lovelace died in 1852 and didn't even have the right to vote.
Although in 1852 that put her in the clear majority, as only one fourteenth of the population could vote.
She also spent 90% of her life with a female head of state, so it's not like women were entirely without power.
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That's because all of your American contractors aren't American. They got outsourced.