A Historical Examination of the Social Factors Affecting Female Participation in Computing

A Historical Examination of the Social Factors Affecting Female Participation in Computing Elizabeth Patitsas, Michelle Craig and Steve Easterbrook University of Toronto Department of Computer Science Toronto, Ontario, Canada patitsas, mcraig, [email protected] ABSTRACT that time? What was it like being a woman in society then? We present a history of female participation in North Amer- Understanding these social trends is important for changing ican CS, with a focus on the social forces involved. For a status quo where women continue to be underrepresented. educators to understand the status quo, and how to change Not much has been written about the history of academic it, we must understand the historical forces that have led CS; most histories of computing focus on the technology, and us here. We begin with the female \computers" of the 19th end in the 70s (e.g. [12, 18]). For young CS educators, there century, then cover the rise of computing machines, estab- is little detailed post-70s history. Our goal in this paper is to lishment of CS, and a history of CS education with regard to provide background information on what has happened with gender. In our discussion of academic CS, we contemplate regard to female enrollments in CS since the 90s { which in academic generations of female computer scientists and de- turn requires us to look at what led to that point. scribe their differential experiences. 1.1 Background Information General Terms Human factors 1.1.1 Types of Barriers As we discuss the barriers faced by women in CS and Keywords STEM careers, we find it useful to categorize these barriers Computer science education, women in CS, studies of CS into a 2x2 grid: Intentional Unintentional 1. INTRODUCTION Institutional De jure discrimination De facto discrimination Increasing the participation of women in computing is Individual Explicit sexism Implicit sexism well-established as an important and difficult task in the CS education community [36, 15]. Much of why it is hard to Institutional vs. Individual. Is it a policy, such as re- increase the participation of women { and other underrep- stricting enrollment in CS, or a lack of maternity leave? resented groups { is because social structures are complex, Or is it the direct behaviour of individuals, such as sex- dynamic systems. We cannot reduce the matter down to a ual harassment or a prejudice against women? few issues that, if fixed, would change everything. For ex- Intentional vs. Unintentional. Policies created without ample, meta-reviews of diversity initiatives outside CS have considering the effects on women, and subconscious found that historical trends must be considered when de- bias against women, are examples of unintentional bar- signing initiatives, since \the disruption [of the status quo] riers; sexual harassment and the explicit barring of is usually not complete, nor fully shared by everyone, leaving women from studying CS in some countries are exam- traces of the old gender order to co-exist with an emerging ples of intentional barriers. newer and more complex notion of gender at work. [8] This paper presents a historical sociology of female participation in North American computer science. By historical 2. A PRE-HISTORY OF WOMEN IN CS sociology we refer to an approach to history which focuses on the social and cultural developments, forces and trends. 2.1 Women as Computers: from the 1820s to Existing histories of female participation in CS instead focus on individuals, such as Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace and the the 1940s ENIAC Girls (e.g. [25, 17, 40, 2]). The histories of female computer scientists are fascinating, 2.1.1 19th Century and Early 20th Century and useful for presenting examples of female role models in The 19th century marked the rise of women's colleges in the field. However, a focus on individuals takes away much the United States [42] as policies barring women from educa- of the context: what was it like being a computer scientist at tion were loosened. This came hand-in-hand with first-wave feminism, in which women fought de jure discriminatory Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or practices in North American society. Women campaigning classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for access to higher education did so on an argument that for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation it would \produce better wives and mothers". For women of on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the privilege in American society, a basic understanding of sci- author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or ence and math in turn became \necessary for motherhood". republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission It should be emphasized that this was a trend for white and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. ITICSE ’14, June 21 - 25 2014, Uppsala, Sweden. women of privilege { most women who studied science in Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. the 19th century were the daughters of scientists and other ACM 978-1-4503-2833-3/14/06 ...$15.00 intellectuals. Consider, for example, that Ada Lovelace was http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2591708.2591731. a countess in a family of mathematicians [25]. 111 For the women scientists that emerged from these colleges, chines were devised in the UK for cryptographic purposes. there were few job opportunities. Teaching at the women's These machines, and the hand computations done in the colleges was the main possibility. Working as a \computer" wars throughout the world, were commonly performed by was another possibility [42]. Women pursuing PhDs or fac- women. ENIAC, arguably the first real computer, was an- ulty positions were expected to be single or \in no danger of nounced in 1946. The plan to run the ENIAC was such: a marrying"; marriage meant resigning from the programme male scientist would be the planner, deciding what was to or their job [42]. As time progressed and society progressed, be computed { and a low-rank, female \coder" would do the women in these positions began to feel they could be both actual machine coding [18]. wives and scientists { when they resisted the norm of resigning upon marriage, they were met with opposition: they 2.2 The Continual IT Labour Crisis: the 50s were threatened and usually fired [42]. through 70s 1870-1900 marked an era of slow infiltration: women be- For the men running computing labs, what was not antic- gan entering doctorate programmes at traditional (male) in- ipated was that the coding would actually be difficult [18]. stitutions in countries such as the US and Germany [42]. As computers began being used for commercial purposes in Most universities were hesitant to allow the women into the the 50s, a labour shortage emerged. Computing in the 50s PhD programmes, but would instead admit them as \special and 60s can be characterized by a large, shotgun approach students" and give them bachelor's degrees instead. Engi- to recruiting \good programmers" when little knowledge of neering schools, however, remained resistant to women [40, what a \good programmer" was. Programming began to be 42]. While by 1910 women were starting a presence in sci- seen as a \dark art" [18]. Due to the individuals who began ence at traditional institutions, there was no equality in em- programming at that time, programmers began to be seen as ployment, and jobs remained deeply \sex typed". asocial [18] { kicking off a feedback loop that persists today. With the slow rise of women in science came the corre- Women continued to have a large presence in program- sponding rise of \women's work" in science [42]. So-called ming in the 50s. They contributed to the development of women's jobs typically were\assistants"to scientists, or work- programming languages [25] and scientific computation [17]. ing as computers for larger groups. These women were sys- But traditional gender roles in many way persisted. Women tematically ignored in the larger scientific community, left in the 50s still had to leave when they became pregnant [40]. out of lists of scientists, conferences, and histories [43]. In- And women hit what they dubbed the \glass ceiling": a col- deed, from 1911 onward there were overt efforts to reduce lective barring from managerial and senior positions [17]. the numbers of women in science. As computer programming rose in prominence, it became masculinized. Women were still allowed entry to the jobs 2.1.2 Women’s Work due to the desperation for quality labour. However, lazy It should be emphasized that computation was considered hiring practices that focused on spurious aptitude and per- \women's work" in the 19th and early 20th century. Looking sonality tests hurt female participation in the industry [18]. at the history of the social sciences in this time, quantitative Inconsistent professionalization efforts also hurt female methods were considered \low" enough that women could do participation by restricting what it meant to be a program- them { but qualitative methods required \the intellect of a mer. The men running the show did not intend to push man" [35]. The reversal of the status (and gendering) of women out of computing { instead, they simply did not con- quantitative vs. qualitative work in the social and biologi- sider how their hiring practices discriminated against women cal sciences happened well into the 20th century (sometime [18]. In short, de facto discrimination was the dominant between the 30s-50s) [35].

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