Gender Codes E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 644

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The computing profession faces a serious gender crisis. Today, fewer women enter computing than anytime in the past 25 years. This book provides an unprecedented look at the history of women and men in computing, detailing how the computing profession emerged and matured, and how the field became male coded. Women's experiences working in offices, education, libraries, programming, and government are examined for clues on how and where women succeeded—and where they struggled. It also provides a unique international dimension with studies examining the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Greece. Scholars in history, gender/women's studies, and science and technology studies, as well as department chairs and hiring directors will find this volume illuminating.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Half title page

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Contributors

Part I: Tools for Understanding

1 Gender Codes

Defining the Problem

FRAMING THE GENDER GAP

STRATEGIES FOR REFORM

HISTORY IN THE PRESENT

2 Computer Science

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

UNEXPLAINED DIFFERENCES

STATUS OF WOMEN IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE

CHANGING REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

GROWTH OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AS A DISCIPLINE

LEADERSHIP: WOMEN AT HIGHER LEVELS

SUMMARY

SOME POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS

FUTURE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE

CLOSING THOUGHTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

3 Masculinity and the Machine Man

Gender in the History of Data Processing

THE SEX TYPING OF DATA PROCESSING WORK

DATA PROCESSING: BETWEEN OFFICE WORK AND MANAGEMENT

THE GENDER POLITICS OF DATA PROCESSING

DATA PROCESSING LABOR IN THE 1970S

AFTER DATA PROCESSING: THE 1980S AND BEYOND

IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN IN COMPUTING

Part II: Institutional Life

4 A Gendered Job Carousel

Employment Effects of Computer Automation

AN UNLIKELY ALLIANCE: WOMEN AND PUNCH-CARD MACHINES

PUNCH-CARD OPERATIONS—A TYPICAL FEMALE JOB

A GENDERED JOB CAROUSEL: THE INTRODUCTION OF ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS

NEW DRUDGE WORK IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

POSTWAR IDEAS ABOUT THE WORK OF WOMEN

CONCLUSION

5 Meritocracy and Feminization in Conflict

Computerization in the British Government

GENDER AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

THE BRITISH EXAMPLE

FROM PREELECTRONIC TO ELECTRONIC COMPUTING

ELECTRONIC COMPUTING WORK GETS AN UPGRADE

PROGRAMMING AS A MANAGEMENT TOOL

SHIFTING IDEALS IN A CRISIS-DRIVEN STATE

INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITIES … INSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

REVIVAL OF THE MANAGEMENT COMPUTER MEN

THE PUBLIC FACE OF GOVERNMENT MERITOCRACY

CONCLUSION

6 Making Programming Masculine

IN THE BEGINNING WERE THE WOMEN …

THE “BAD BOYS” OF PROGRAMMING

PROFESSIONALIZATION = MASCULINIZATION

CONCLUSION

7 Gender and Computing in the Push-Button Library

GENDER AND STATUS DIVISIONS WITHIN LIBRARIANSHIP, 1950–1980

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARY LABOR, 1980–1990

CONCLUSION: FROM CATALOGING TO METADATA

Part III: Media and Culture

8 Cultural Perceptions of Computers in Norway 1980–2007

From “Anybody” Via “Male Experts” to “Everybody”

THE PERSONAL COMPUTER

DISCURSIVE LOGICS BEFORE 2000

CHALLENGING THE HEGEMONIC DISCOURSE: RECONSTRUCTIONS AND NEW VOICES

HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE CHANGE?

9 Constructing Gender and Technology in Advertising Images

Feminine and Masculine Computer Parts

METHODOLOGY

MEN ON THE PHONE

THE KEYBOARD VERSUS THE MOUSE

THE PRINTER VERSUS THE HARD DRIVE

WOMEN ON THE SCREEN

CONCLUSION

Part IV: Women in Computing

10 The Pleasure Paradox

Bridging the Gap Between Popular Images of Computing and Women’s Historical Experiences

THE APPEAL AND PLEASURES OF COMPUTING: WOMEN’S STORIES

IMAGE VERSUS EXPERIENCE: POLICY LESSONS

11 Programming Enterprise

Women Entrepreneurs in Software and Computer Services

WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT IN LARGE IT ENTERPRISES

ARGONAUT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

GENTRY, INC.

PHYLISS MURPHY AND ASSOCIATES

ADAPSO AND NACCB

CONCLUSION

12 Gender Codes

Lessons from History

WOMEN IN COMPUTING

IMAGES OF GENDER AND COMPUTING

SHADOWS OF STEREOTYPES

13 Gender Codes

Prospects for Change

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS

REVERSING CURRENT TRENDS

INTRODUCING NEW IMAGES: APPROACHES TO CHANGE

PATHS FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE

Bibliography

Index

Gender Codes

Press Operating Committee

Chair

Linda Shafer

former Director, Software Quality Institute

The University of Texas at Austin

Editor-in-Chief

Alan Clements

Professor

University of Teesside

Board Members

Mark J. Christensen, Independent Consultant

James W. Cortada, IBM Institute for Business Value

Richard E. (Dick) Fairley, Founder and Principal Associate, Software Engineering Management Associates (SEMA)

Phillip Laplante, Professor of Software Engineering, Penn State University

Evan Butterfield, Director of Products and Services

Kate Guillemette, Product Development Editor, CS Press

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In memory of Karen J. Freeze (1945–2009), scholar and colleague, who in her life successfully bridged notable divides between nature and culture, industry and academe, research and family, and East and West.

Foreword

In 1966 there was already a “manpower” shortage of trained (or even untrained) programmers, operators, and software designers. The situation became a crisis when an estimated 50% more programmers would be needed by 1967.

It was an exciting time—the Mercury and Gemini programs sent humans into space and the Apollo program landed them on the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. The effort fulfilled President Kennedy’s goal when he said that “no single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

With this kind of presidential mandate, there were free-flowing funds in collecting the workers, and there were no barriers to race, religion, political leanings, or gender. Just about anyone who could pass an aptitude test, believed in the mission, and loved challenges in logical thinking was brought on board. The work was centered around the computers and the control systems that launched astronauts into space, and not on ambition or power—it was amazing that so many people could be coordinated and committed so that each person felt he/she had a part in the work. That gave us all a sense of pride.

I was lucky enough to join the ranks in 1965, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its subcontractors were hiring a cast of thousands. The desperate need was primarily a call to arms due to the Cold War and the race for space—using a new technology only increased the challenge!

Of course, we must admit that there were hurdles as well as successes. Sadly, the struggles have not always been brought to light, nor have they resulted in learning experiences. Where I worked in 1965, men and women programmers and program designers sat together in offices (pre-cubicle), shared ideas, and acted as sounding boards for each other. We had comfortable and equal working conditions, supplies, and equipment. Following a design, we wrote—by hand—computer program instructions on large coding pads (80 columns per instruction, the same width as a Hollerith punched card). A courier came by twice each day, picking up the coding pads and delivering yesterday’s instructions that had been magically translated into a different physical medium—card decks. Put some paper on a cart one day and presto, the next day, a stack of inch by inch, stiff paper sheets with holes punched in them were delivered. These cards constituted the program, which was sent to the machine room where operators fed the decks through the card reader. (Remember, this was the mid-1960s.)

What I did not think about then was that the machine room, where the programs ended their journey, was cool (it had to be—the older mainframe computers put out a lot of heat), the operators had some authority, and they were male. By contrast, the “support” room in the basement housed the female keypunchers. It was hot and stuffy and filled with rows and rows of machines where the women sat in front of the card punch machines all day. Keypunching was mind-numbing, the breaks were seldom and short, and the data had no meaning to the keyboardists. (This is not to denigrate the job or the need for it—members of my close family were keypunch “girls.”)

Unfortunately, these women were often blamed for errors in the deck, which then became errors in the program—it was easy for a programmer, any programmer, to shift the blame when necessary. This resulted in instituting a verification procedure where each punched card deck had to be rekeyed, using the exact same data, by another woman, making the reward system (based on volume) even less meaningful.

During this time period, I knew several male operators who, without a 4-year degree of any kind, were promoted into the ranks of programmer, seemingly because they were skillful at reading hardware signal lights, fanning card decks, hanging tapes, mounting disks, or even just putting printed output on delivery carts. These were important, necessary activities, carried out by some incredible young men. However, it isn’t at all clear how those duties translated into a talent for programming. Keypunchers, who also performed mostly physical tasks, were rarely (never, in my experience) selected for aptitude tests or invited to an interview that could have led to an elevated position. I never knew of a single woman keypuncher who was promoted into any other rank, with the possible exception of women who were elevated to group supervisor, and then they had to stay in the same hot room. I wish I were relating only an individual experience and not the norm, but there is evidence that this situation was prevalent and has been recreated in many ways.

In 1969, the Data Processing Management Association (DPMA) awarded its very first “Computer Sciences Man of the Year” award to U.S. Navy Commander Grace Hopper, eventually to be Rear Admiral Hopper. She was already famous as the “inventor” of COBOL, a programming language that was close to natural speech (English)—for many years the most widely used language in computing. On three different occasions I drove for hours just to hear her captivating and motivating speech. Now she was a role model.

Women continued to enter the field of computing, not only as “keypunch girls” but also as professionals and educators who could employ their mathematical or engineering education or proclivities, in unprecedented num­bers during the 1960s and 1970s. Many, maybe most, of them greatly enjoyed their experiences.

There were the pros and cons of being female in the computing field then, just as there are now. The disadvantages still exist, but they have morphed into different ones and are shifting the workforce culture in an unhealthy direction that threatens the future of a profession that still needs diverse participation and input to support our undisputed computer-reliant life.

In this book, the chapters provide a fresh and constructive look at potential reasons for the growing imbalance in gender, exploring the different reasons for the evolution of a profession that has become as male coded as the computing profession now is. While the first wave of programmers and analysts worked in a relatively unsegregated environment, the current computer workforce (across all sectors, including government employees, small business owners, entrepreneurs, chip designers, space-race programmers, and game developers) has become ordered and structured as primarily male.

While Thomas Misa and his colleagues search for answers, they assume no conspiracy theories. There is no diatribe against the male gender, nor does anyone fan the flames of the early feminist movement. It is simply a fact that the last 25 years have seen an increasing imbalance in gender in the computing profession. Most other science and technology sectors actually demonstrate steady growth in the number of female participants. Clearly, something odd happened in computing.

This book is, at times, brutally honest: women are practically absent from the historical literature on computing. They made significant contributions in all segments of the computer industry, yet they had to fight for respect and funding, and too often they lost.

This book gives voice to historians as well as practitioners—those who experienced the heyday, those who are trying to understand it, those who report it, and all those who are trying to change it. The book takes a fair look at this complex issue, is true to history, presents an international perspective, and without judgment explores the strange and unsettling phenomenon that we are now living with: only the male half of the population is working to achieve the potential of computing. And, with the diagnosis that computing’s public image is radically out of step with computing’s actual practices, the book presents a clear way of moving forward.

If I had had a crystal ball in 1965 and realized what 2009 would look like, it might have been easier, or more obviously important, that we should strive to preserve the culture of the “golden age” of women in computing, while helping it to mature and evolve to meet today’s technical challenges. And, by all measures, to be fair.

LINDA SHAFER, CSDP

IEEE Computer Society Press Chair

Preface

We don’t normally think of academic publishing as a contact sport, but this volume was born with bruises on my arm. We were planning a workshop at the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) and enjoying the process of framing a much-needed historical assessment of gender and computing. We knew it was a respectable topic. Scholars from many different backgrounds and traditions had in recent years put gender on the academic map. The exploration of gender and computing history was long overdue. After all, there must be something in the many hundreds of photographs we’d seen over the years showing “white guys with computers.”

When introducing the CBI workshop to my colleagues in science and engineering, I explained how gender had become a useful category of analysis in the social sciences, and our aim for bringing gender analysis into the mainstream of computing history. Often, I didn’t get more than two or three sentences into the spiel when a female colleague grabbed my arm and said: “no, you don’t quite understand—what you are doing, gender and computing, is important, really important.” My technical colleagues had gone through graduate school and started their careers in the midst of the women’s movement, and many had struggled in their careers and institutions with its ambiguous successes. They wanted to understand gender and computing, but they also wanted to change the existing state of affairs. This volume took form with both these aims in mind.

We were fortunate to draw on a growing interest in the gendered aspects of computing. Educators, administrators, managers, and scholars share an interest in better understanding how computing has emerged and become part of contemporary culture. Computing educators are justifiably concerned about flagging computer science and engineering enrollments, while administrators and managers at all levels strive to recruit and retain a more gender-balanced workforce. Scholars in computer history can appreciate that gender is a useful category of analysis, and that gender studies of computing are urgently needed. To identify promising themes and possible contributors, we formed a steering committee consisting of Janet Abbate (Virginia Tech), Veronika Oechtering (University of Bremen), Jeffrey Yost (Charles Babbage Institute), and myself.

Bringing these educators and scholars together for a weekend in May 2008 depended on material support from several sources. At the University of Minnesota, we are grateful for essential financial support from the Institute of Technology Dean’s Office, the Computer Science and Engineering Department, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and the Program for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. International travel was funded by the University’s Office of International Programs and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). Everything we do at the Charles Babbage Institute represents a unique partnership between the founders of CBI, with their prescient vision of supporting a research center for the history of computing, and the longstanding institutional support from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology, the University Libraries, and the Program for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

We are fortunate also for first-rate staff at CBI. R. Arvid Nelson, CBI’s archivist, developed a special museum exhibit entitled “Gendered Bits: Iden­tities, Practices, and Artifacts in Computing” in cooperation with in-house pro­fessional designer Darren Terpstra. These materials were physically installed in Andersen Library during the summer of 2008 and will be made available permanently via an online exhibit. (Images of the installed exhibit, as well as literature and background materials for the workshop, can be found at umn.edu/ ∼tmisa/gender/.) Katie Charlet took charge of registration and played an essential role in preparing this volume for publication, including translations from the French (again!), while Jeffrey Yost and Stephanie Crowe assisted with preparations and logistics.

Gender studies of technology and science have an active interdisciplinary journal literature in Signs, Women’s Studies, Gender and Society, and Social Studies of Science, Technology & Culture, as well as key books, including those by Roger Horowitz (editor), Boys and Their Toys? (New York: Routledge, 2001); Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women (New York: Routledge, 1991); Donna J. Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium (New York: Routledge, 1997); Nina E. Lerman, Ruth Oldenziel, and Arwen Mohun (editors), Gender and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004); and Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun (editors), His and Hers (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998). For computer history, see the special issue introduced by Janet Abbate, “Women and Gender in the History of Computing,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2003): 4–8. Our gender and computing bibliography can be found at www.umn.edu/∼tmisa/gender/literature.html.

THOMAS J. MISA

Minneapolis, Minnesota

March 2010

Contributors

JANET ABBATE is an assistant professor in Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech. She is the author of Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999) and co-editor with Brian Kahin of Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (MIT Press, 1995). She also was guest editor for a special issue on “Women and Gender in the History of Computing,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2003). Currently, she is writing a book on women in the computing profession since World War II.

HILDE G. CORNELIUSSEN is an associate professor of Digital Culture at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, where she teaches courses in digital culture, gender and ICT, and computer history. Corneliussen holds a Ph.D. in Humanistic Informatics, and she has published on gender and ICT, computer history, computer education, and computer games. She is co-editor of Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (MIT Press, 2008).

GREG DOWNEY is a professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication and the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850–1950 (Routledge, 2002), and Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

NATHAN ENSMENGER is an assistant professor in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. His current research interests include the social and labor history of computer programming, the history of artificial intelligence, and the use of computers as “decision technologies” in medicine, finance, and government. He is completing a book on the history of software development.

THOMAS HAIGH is an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He received his Ph.D. in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania and has published on many aspects of the history of computing.

CAROLINE CLARKE HAYES is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She is the first Ph.D. to graduate from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics program in the School of Computer Science. The focus of her research work is how to design effective systems of people and technology; current projects focus on technology for collaboration over distance. She is chair of the University of Minnesota’s Women’s Faculty Cabinet for 2009–2010 and co-investigator on the university’s most recent National Science Foundation ADVANCE proposal.

MARIE HICKS received her Ph.D. in History from Duke University in 2009. She teaches courses in history, STS, and women’s studies at Duke University and North Carolina State University. Her dissertation, Compiling Inequalities: Computerization in the British Civil Service and Nationalized Industries, 1940–1979, investigated the understudied, feminized class of machine operators upon whose work the U.K. government built its ambitious national computing projects.

SERKAN KARAS is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and National Technical University of Athens, Greece. A native Cypriot who speaks Turkish, Greek, and English, he is interested in comparative and transnational approaches to the history of technological infrastructures.

HARA KONSTA is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and National Technical University of Athens, Greece. A high-school teacher of arts and crafts, Konsta is writing her dissertation on the history of co-shaping of computing configurations and work/educational space.

THEODORE LEKKAS is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and National Technical University of Athens, Greece. A computer industry professional, he is working on a dissertation on aspects of the history of software in Greece.

THOMAS J. MISA is director of the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he also teaches in the Ph.D. program in the history of science, technology, and medicine. He is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and holds the ERA-Land Grant Chair in the History of Technology. He is author or editor of six books, including Leonardo to the Internet (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

CORINNA SCHLOMBS in December 2009 completed her dissertation, a comparative and transnational examination of the transfer of computing technology and culture between the United States and Western European countries from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published “Toward International Computing History,” in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2006): 107–108; and “Engineering International Expansion: IBM and Remington Rand in European Computer Markets,” in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 30 (2008): 42–58.

ARISTOTLE TYMPAS is assistant professor of the History of Technology in Modernity at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He specializes in the history of the use of computers in engineering contexts, mechanical, electrical, and biomedical.

JEFFREY R. YOST is associate director of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. He has published books on the history of the computer industry and scientific computing as well as more than a dozen articles and book chapters on the business, social, and cultural and intellectual history of computing, software, and networking.