The ENIAC girls vanish

I don’t think I have ever recommended a chapter in a book and I understand that it is not very practical to do so, but I found Clive Thompson’s chapter “The ENIAC girls vanish” the best explanation of gender imbalance in tech that I have encountered. This chapter is from Thompson’s book – Coders: The making of a new tribe and the remaking of the world.

The title is a reference to the early dominance of female coders and the chapter traces the history of the proportion of women working as coders and the factors responsible for changes. I cannot do justice to the complexity of this issue, but I will attempt to identify a couple of issues I found to be interesting.

In the beginning, men did hardware and women did software. Software despite the actual challenges of programming primitive machines was considered pretty much a secretarial task. As more and more programmers were needed and as wages increased more and more males were drawn into the field.

Thompson spends considerable time explaining changes in the makeup of college computer science students. Enrollment in CS programs was primarily male – white and Asian. Computer science faculty members were not oblivious to the lack of diversity of their students and made efforts to understand why. Thompson explains that makes had an advantage in early courses because of previous coding experiences. These were not kids who had taken CS in high school and this was at a time when having a computer at home was expensive. Early computers – TRS80s, Apple IIs – had limited software of interest to adolescents, but those who had access and were interested learned to program them to explore. Males thus came to college with experience and often dominated the initial courses discouraging the women who took the courses from scratch. The women who stuck it out ended up doing just as well in later courses. To address this issue, the CS programs decreased the size of intro classes and tried to offer greater individual attention in introductory courses.

Thompson then argues that CS became a victim of its own success. The visibility of the financial opportunities in developing software especially for online functions resulted in students swamping CS programs. The opportunities not only increased the number of interested students, but also made it far more difficult for higher ed to recruit and retain faculty members. Classes again ballooned in size and programs to shepherd beginning students were dropped. Getting through the early classes again was heavily biased by experience before these classes and those willing to compete to advance within these programs. This situation led to a decline in females entering and completing CS programs. The stereotype of successful programmers/entrepreneurs perpetuated in media also put off competent women. There have been some recent improvements, but the trend has yet to revert to what it was even 20 years ago.

Solutions? Thompson makes a compelling case that the talent for coding is widely distributed if individuals have the opportunities to develop this talent. It would seem that the issue is at what level should the money be spent to develop talent and what level of proficiency should be expected at the next level. Would wide availability of a CS course in high school be enough? Should higher education be funded at a level necessary to start students from scratch?

I have been trying to locate something else Thompson has written on this topic I could offer. I found this interview with Thompson that you may find of some use.