page_title: Gender disparity in computing
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Gender disparity in computing / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: These US Army photos from the archives of the ARL Technical Library: Two women wiring the right side of the ENIAC with a new program, in the "pre- von Neumann" days. "U.S. Army Photo" from the archives of the ARL Technical Library. Standing: Marlyn Wescoff Crouching: Ruth Lichterman
context_page_description: Gender disparity in computing has become a global concern due to the emergence of the Information Age. Main concerns arose due to the growing gender disparity in the field of computing. The field of computing increasingly has developed a gender gap. This gender gap has made the field become more male dominant. With the decline in women pursuing education within the field of computer science and women working in field, lack of diversity in field emerged. Concerns of improving perspective in the field, creating more diversity, and attempting to close the gender gap motivated public policy debates addressing gender equality due to the growing importance of computing and technology in society. This dialogue helped to expand information technology innovations and to reduce the consequences of sexism. Growing concerns about the disparity in computing has allowed for the rise of organizations creating their own initiatives to bring women into the field of computer science.
context_section_description: In the early days of computers and computing, women were well-represented in the field.  Women often worked as "human computers," making complicated calculations and working in large groups, such as the Harvard Computers.  Women also worked on ballistics calculations and cryptography. In 1946, the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical engineering and the Unites States Army Ballistics Research Laboratory began to research the trajectories of projectiles. 200 women had been involved in this research. Human computers who were women could be paid less than their male counterparts. By 1943, the majority of human computers were women.  Due to the lack of labor resources during the Second World War, women were actively recruited into computer jobs that would traditionally gone to men. Finding jobs in the computer science field allowed women to find higher opportunities in the workforce. Early programmers on machines such as ENIAC, were mostly women. The reason that women were involved as programmers and human computers was because "they expected programming to be a low skill clerical function," and that the difficult work was the creation of the hardware, which male engineers largely worked on.  The programmers of the ENIAC, six women who designed the public demonstrations and prepared the machine for its public debut were not fully recognized for their contributions by the media.
  Computer science was the fastest growing college major and popular STEM discipline among women from the 1970s until the 1980s. According to the National Science Foundation's data of women receiving a Bachelor of Science degree spanning four decades (1966-2006), computer science is the only STEM discipline facing a downward slope after its highest peak in 1984 with 37% of women receiving their degrees in compute science. Similar patterns exist in the computing workforce as well with a peak of 38% in 1987.
  By the 1960s, while computer programming was still touted as a good field for women to go into, major shifts were beginning to take place that would help push women out of the field. Men who were programming started to make the field more "prestigious," creating professional associations, education requirements for work and by actively discouraging hiring women in the field. Hiring tools were introduced in which answers were shared among all-male groups and clubs. Another way to push women out of the field was to use personality tests that favored people who were not interested in working with others, which was slanted towards a certain type of male applicant. According to Janet Abbate, the work that the ENIAC women did during World War II was considered menial because of preconceived gender notions. Women were not allowed to work in developing hardware and so, over time, it became associated as a man's job. Software development was new and women worked that job because they had prior experience as 'human computers'. After these trends were entrenched in the industry, it has continued to perpetuate itself into the modern day. Some computer science programs, such as Princeton, in the mid-1960s wouldn't even admit women into their program.
caption: Two women reprogram the ENIAC.
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