A beautiful story about Gwen Barzay, a black woman who broke both racial and gender barriers to become an early computer programmer. “Today she is retired, and like most retirees, she asks her son to help her with computers. She likes her Mac and runs a small business buying and selling books on line. What does she have to say about the difficulties she faced breaking into a male-dominated industry? ‘I had it easy. The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black. Most women had it much harder.'” The computer didn’t care. Beautifully put.
It had to be at least in the 60’s, yes?
[edit]
I ask because the instances of prejudice and all… still surprises me, having been born in the early 60’s I don’t know, I just never understood that whole thing.
Edited 2012-03-29 21:57 UTC
If you were female you’d know that there’s still PLENTY of prejudice to go around. Surprisingly prettiness goes hand-in-hand with prejudice: the uglier or tougher you look the easier people find it to believe you know your stuff, and vice versa.
With me looking like a river troll I’ve had it plenty easy, but I’ve seen up-close and personal how bad things can be for a pretty one.
Edited 2012-03-29 23:37 UTC
That is interesting. In a way I would have thought it would be the other way around, if anything. I think it was in USA Today (or maybe I saw it in ARS Technica) there was research done saying that handsome men are paid more than less handsome men, and the same for women. But pay scales are not the same as respect, I suppose.
You do yourself a disservice, ma’am.
But you’re exactly right: At my full time job in law enforcement the tough looking women tend to get the leadership positions regardless of competency, while the pretty girls end up stuck in entry level positions such as administrative assistants or records clerks. It’s not universal of course, but common enough to notice even in passing. On the flipside, the men tend to be promoted more or less in line with their experience and qualifications, and physical appearance means nothing.
The article says “A little over sixty years ago…” and is dated March 2012, so it refers to the early 1950s.
Wow, I did not see that… thanks!
That was a lovely story, and I agree totally. The computer has never cared, and I don’t believe that the majority of computers hackers have ever cared either. You live and die by the quality of the work that you produce, and the person that produced the work has always been a distant consideration.
Another way of putting it: on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
At RIT the male-female ratio in my CS classes 10 years ago might have been 40:1. There are more women at places I work now, but they do tend to take gender-centric roles, with engineers being predominantly male.
Given that so few females go to school for tech degrees, it’s not a surprise that few take up tech professions. But my question is, is this because females are being actively segregated from the field? Are they being discouraged? Or is it all by choice?
If it is by choice, is it something to do with upbringing or is there some intrinsic factor?
I’d like to hear your experiences.
Just to keep things in perspective, bear in mind that women outnumber men in British and American colleges/universities at at almost a 60/40 ratio. Therefore, female domination of an academic subject must be more common than the other way around.
Many of the so-called “prestigious” work roles within IT, although high salary, offer very poor outcomes in terms of a decent work-life balance.
In addition, there are plenty of work roles that exclude men such as in the areas of social work and work with children.
rhyder,
“Just to keep things in perspective, bear in mind that women outnumber men in British and American colleges/universities at at almost a 60/40 ratio. Therefore, female domination of an academic subject must be more common than the other way around.”
I went to look this up, and it seems you are right (from 2005, but it’ll do)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-10-19-male-college-cove…
However this just amplifies the male to female discrepancies in technical fields.
“Many of the so-called ‘prestigious’ work roles within IT, although high salary, offer very poor outcomes in terms of a decent work-life balance.”
I feel the IT industry is loosing it’s appeal as ever more firms give in to offshoring and consolidation, unlikely to return to the glory years of the 90s. There’s no doubt about it the work-life balance is a negative for this profession.
Hmm, which country does that apply to?
Here in Austria there are no such exclusions. Men work in medical jobs, care for sick or elderly, work as teachers, sport instructors, in day care facilities or youth group leaders (e.g. boy scouts).
It’s certainly the case in the UK.
Just one in 50 teachers of the youngest primary schoolchildren in England are male, despite a government recruitment campaign, figures revealed today.
Only 2% of staff in nursery and reception classes, which teach under-fives, are men, according to figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
In schools with receptions but no nurseries, this figure falls to 1%. Men account for 16% of all primary schoolteachers. – Under-fives have almost no male teachers, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/07/primaryschools.educ…
Well, you claimed that men would be excluded from working in these areas. These facts prove the opposite.
Women have been and sometimes still are excluded from working in certain areas, claiming that men are excluded from other while facts show that they are not is sad.
I was under the impression that MOST computer operators (and thus programmers before the two tasks were really separated) were women back in the day. It wasn’t a prestigious job. They were seen as low grade machine technicians.
Sure, with the first generation systems (1940-1950) the operators tended to be women. They were not programmers though (as loosely that the word can be applied to Colossus, I guess). There’s a big difference.
Edited 2012-03-29 23:33 UTC
It was all for practical reasons, though: women generally have smaller, more slender hands than men, and thus it was much easier and safer to let them handle changing the vacuum tubes. Also women even in general tend to be more slender, so you could fit more women in a room than you could fit men.
I think it had far more to do with WWII, both the UK and US hired literally zillions of women who weren’t allowed to fight into the secret world of the intelligence gathering and processing.
That’s where the early computing devices were, so after the war, there was a ready pool of women that had worked on these data entry thingies that men hadn’t seen yet.
Some of those were working as operators on code cracking machines, and other on what ever else the WAF could do where men weren’t available.
I suspect Grace Hopper got her start there too.
That, too, but I did read an interview about someone who worked on ENIAC and was a big shot there, and he said that literally one of the biggest reasons for hiring women was indeed their smaller hands.
I’d provide a link, but heck, I can’t even remember if I read it online or in a magazine.
Hmm, well I would have never suspected physical characteristics had anything to do with it, but I suppose it makes sense. But the differentiation based on physical characteristics hasn’t carried over into modern computing, has it? So why the gap today?
It’s been said that to be a great engineer you need to have a slight streak of autism inside, somewhat indifferent to people and feelings. When I first heard of that I and others were annoyed, but I eventually came to accept it.
Autism in boys runs 5 times that of girls, so a much lighter version probably follows.
As it stands, I have only ever worked with female engineers in large companies like Motorola who go out of their way to hire them, they have to meet affirmative hiring laws. In every smaller company, zippo.
Anyway any female engineer could probably have her pick of companies to work for. I wonder where my robot/rocket daughter will end up, NASA we hope but not in space.
I really liked this story – thanks for sharing it.
In 1993 I was very fortunate to be able to take a computer science class on compiler design with the distinguished professor Susan L. Graham. As far as I can recall, she was one of the earliest female faculty members at UC Berkeley. Her star shone brightly.
Edited 2012-03-30 01:52 UTC
Great article, thanks for posting the link.
Sometimes as a US citizen one thinks we’re declining — economically, politically, international affairs.
But then you read an article like this and see that at least we’re evolving in the right direction in terms of racism, sexism, diversity, etc.
Amazing that this woman says at the end ““I had it easy… Most women had it much harder.” You can see that it’s through that kind of indomitable spirit that she persevered and triumphed. Kudos to her!
Actually she was treated with fairness, according to her marks. Good for her.
In contrast, nowadays countless applicants are rejected because of their sex, race or similar considerations, that is, because they don’t belong to the legally mandated quota of women and minorities. Where’s the outrage?