Gender Bias in Computing

TL;DR

This paper provides a historical analysis of gender bias in the US computing workforce, introducing new quantitative data and a novel gender analysis method to challenge existing narratives about women's participation.

Contribution

It offers new historical data and a novel method for analyzing gender participation in computing from the 1950s, correcting misconceptions about women's roles.

Findings

Women’s participation in computing was higher than often cited in early years.

Gender bias today is linked to cultural shifts in the 1980s, not 1960s professionalization.

Data challenges the 'making programming masculine' thesis.

Abstract

This paper examines the historical dimension of gender bias in the US computing workforce. It offers new quantitative data on the computing workforce prior to the availability of US Census data in the 1970s. Computer user groups (including SHARE, Inc., and the Mark IV software user group) are taken as a cross-section of the computing workforce. A novel method of gender analysis is developed to estimate women's and men's participation in computing beginning in the 1950s. The data presented here are consistent with well-known NSF statistics that show computer science undergraduate programs enrolling increasing numbers of women students during 1965-1985. These findings challenge the 'making programming masculine' thesis, and serve to correct the unrealistically high figures often cited for women's participation in early computer programming. Gender bias in computing today is traced not to 1960s professionalization but to cultural changes in the 1980s and beyond.