First women computer programmers inspire documentary | Hacker News Reader

First women computer programmers inspire documentary

abcnews.go.com

20 pointsbootload12 comments

  Unlike men, women pay attention to detail and tend to get the job done,
  she said. "They are more willing to do whatever it takes," said Malcom.
  "Men want to delegate the nasty part of the job, like handing off the baby
  when it's number two."

Really? Really? Ouch!

The rest of this article is interesting for the light it sheds on historical women in computing, but the bits where it talks about how the industry is lacking in some crucial way because there are few women range from unfounded to offensive.

Does anyone know of any evidence that the presence of women in a technical team affects results in any way (positive or negative)? It seems like "there are not enough women in computing" people frequently make the claim that more women will improve the field; has anyone measured to check?

I certainly don't have any good answers (does anyone? This is probably an intensely difficult area to quantify/qualify) but here is a decent article discussing women (edit) in IT, put forth by the National Center for Women and Information Technology:

http://anitaborg.org/files/abi_wherearethewomen.pdf

Section 8 addresses some of the issues of why the declining numbers of women in computer science may matter.

"... Unlike men, women pay attention to detail and tend to get the job done ..."

If you consider the operations of Bletchley Park, UK in WW2 as important with half the staff women [0] I would say your question has been answered. Effectiveness in wartime is measured by competence, not perception. Jean Valentine a "bombe operator" at Bletchley had this to say about the type of work and importantly the effectiveness:

Q:Was it unusual to have women working on the machine? I'm thinking that, when telephone switching systems were first invented, men were found to be inferior to women at organising the system. Was the same true with the bombes?

To which Valentine answered:

"On the first bombe there were men working on the machine, but later more women were brought in to do the job, which I don't think some people liked. You must remember that there were 210 bombes, with three shifts of workers so they could run constantly. The shifts were 8am to 4pm, 4pm to midnight and then midnight to 8am. That's a lot of people doing the job." [1]

Effective in the constrained role they had? Yes. There was a demarcation in tasks between the boffins - which included women - and the operators - mostly women - but that in no way diminishes the role played.

[0] http://skirtsandladders.com/?p=504

[1] http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/analysis/2260231/q-jean-valentine-ble...

"... Unlike men, women pay attention to detail and tend to get the job done ..."

1) Highly generalized statement. 2) Demonstrably untrue -- computer science requires attention to detail, and save for Lady Lovelace, the biggest contributors to this field have always been men.

But why bother getting into gender at all, especially if you're going to just trot out generalizations? "Men are X, women are Z" is so 3rd grade. People are individuals, affected but not controlled by their gender.

You forgot about Grace Hopper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

Sure, and Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Goldberg_%28computer_scie... helped OOP really evolve.

Women have had serious influence on computer science since the very beginning.

    "The way women lead is advantageous," said Leighton. 
    "They have better interpersonal skills and build 
     consensus and work horizontally across multiple 
     organizations."

So it's cool to make blatantly sexist remarks Or it only OK when it's favorable to women?

Here's the catch: As soon as someone makes such a sweeping generalization they've asserted that there exist sweeping general differences between men and women. Which is exactly the reasoning that keeps some people from hiring women for geek jobs.

Careful buddy, you're edging into misogyny there. Next thing you know you'll be demanding proof regarding feminist statements about wages or health issues - and at that point you're practically part of the Talliban.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_lovelace ?

I should have noticed your post before I asked the exact same question. Arguably, the first computer programmer in the world was a woman -- in fact, probably the inventor of computer programming.

Betty Bartik is my great aunt (my dad's aunt) and it's been fun chatting with her over the years about her work "as" the first computers. I think there's at least one book that was published about their work, but I'm not sure what the title is.

Thanks for posting the link! I'll forward her the article.

Edit: Looks like the article is a few years old now, so I'm sure she's aware of it. BTW, she and her fellow female computers periodically travel around for speaking engagements.

Ada Lovelace?

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