User:AspiringWriter2020/Gender disparity in computing

Background
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'.

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.

Barriers to advancement
Measures like experience, aptitude tests, and college degrees were used by companies to hire people for the job in the 1960s and onwards. The requirement of college degrees were not helpful for women to get a job. Many did not either think of pursuing further studies because of the societal expectation that women should be married and raise children. Not having adequate resources to attain a four-year degree also played a factor in not furthering their education.

When word processors came into being in the 1980s, job titles and duties had to be reorganized. With more advanced machines to learn and use, receiving a college education became a must for prospective workers to be considered for a position. This left out women who weren't as educated or possessed enough money to afford higher education.

Lack of acknowledgment and promotion of skills
The need for experience helped women a lot better than the requirement of a college degree. They had more chances of gaining experience at a workplace than attaining a college degree. Aptitude tests were also a measure used by companies to determine who had the skills necessary for the job. It also made it easier for women to land jobs in the computing field because of its nature of objectivity, but it did not necessarily mean better treatment of women than men in the field.

Societal and institutional assumptions of what gender and its capabilities were, were most likely to influence the positions of the women in the workplace then. As it changed over time, so did what women were capable of doing. The marriage bar and assumptions that women would not stay in the workplace for long after marriage became reasons for companies to deny promotions and increased salaries to women. With the advancement of technology, the complexity of the jobs also rose. This led to many women being unable to pursue those jobs as the companies handed them over to men. Pre-conceived notions of the abilities of men and women affected these decisions.

Punch-card operations were mostly a woman's job in the second half of the 20th century. The conditions associated with this job - noisy rooms, heavy manual labor, no opportunity for growth, less pay, unfavorable work environments and behaviors - forced many women to eventually leave their jobs. A Harvard Business School report stated that due to negative experiences of keeping up with horrible work conditions, pressure to complete the work on a tight schedule, and dealing with male-dominated behaviors, half of the women joining the workforce left their jobs after working for ten years.

Technological advancements
The ENIAC not only initiated the rapid development of technology, but also the shift of computing work from females to males. Before 1954, MetLife had a large number of women workers in their punch-card division. A majority of women in this division received an annual salary of $3,400 (approximately 55 women) while the highest salary possible was $6,700. After the company converted its punch-card division to a computer division, there were less than 10 women in the division and the highest annual salary possible was $5,400. More men were appointed in the department and the highest salary possible was over $9,000. Many women were assigned to other routine jobs in the department or let go once the transition was made.

The women still working after the transition were mostly appointed in data entry. It continued to be a low-paid, difficult, high-pressure, and time-dependent job that required a lot of accuracy because the machines were only as good as its input. This further added to the stress because if the machines gave inaccurate information, it was assumed that the women were making mistakes in the calculations during the input process. Even though the technological advancements continued well towards the 21st century, an advancement in better opportunities and work environments continued to stay the same, discouraging women to enter or continue in the field.

Stereotyping computer scientists
Different forms of media also played a part in unconsciously discouraging women from entering the computing field in the late 20th century. Advertisements promoted the idea of the women doing the grunt work in computing while the men oversaw the women's work. For example, men were shown to be using the phone while in front of the computer, while women were using the keyboard to do work on the computer.

As women slowly became experts in the field, journalists started writing about the fewer number of men who were experts in the field, while writing pieces about women's lack of expertise, shifting the narrative.