Where Have All the Women Gone?

Computer programming was originally considered a woman's job--and was advertised in the women's section of employment classifieds. ENIAC, the first general purpose all-electronic computer, had the majority of its programs entered by women. And they did it without manuals, instead referring to the logical schematics of the computer to enter their programs. Yet, because these women often posed with the machine they programmed for photos to accompany stories and articles, they were disparagingly referred to as refrigerator women, equating them to the models who would present kitchen appliances in department stores. This circumstance cannot be traced as the cause that led to women's dwindling presence in computer science, but it surely didn't help at the time. Instead of inspiring more young women to enter this wondrous field, these premier women computer scientists were largely forgotten and pushed behind the men who built ENIAC. The few women I know in the computer science major are just as capable, if not more so, than the men in the major. It's not capability keeping women from the profession, so what is it? The environment we are given to work in? Dungeon-like, windowless basement rooms? Or is it that young women look at computer science and don't see many women, so it becomes something to be avoided, with the cycle repeating ad nauseam? I don't have the answer, but with computers becoming more prevalent throughout society, we will hopefully see women coming back to computer science.