Women & Computing at Distill

This is a co-presented talk with [Elise Worthy](https://speakerdeck.com/eliseworthy/).

Computer programming was once seen as "women's work." Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Adele Goldberg, and others played pivotal roles in paving the way for today's computing professions. So why then do we see so few women in our community? We'll cover the history of women in computing, possible causes of the gender imbalance, and ideas for how our community can shape a future that includes more women.

Transcript

1. the history of women in computing 1 Monday, August 12, 13
2. Elise Worthy @eliseworthy 2 Monday, August 12, 13
3. 3 Monday, August 12, 13
4. I helped found RailsBridge Seattle 4 Monday, August 12, 13
5. I’m helping start a developer school for women (details soon!) 5 Monday, August 12, 13
6. Jessica Lynn Suttles @jlsuttles 6 Monday, August 12, 13
7. I’m a software engineer at getg5.com in Bend, OR 7 Monday, August 12, 13
8. I organized the first @RailsGirlsLA 8 Monday, August 12, 13
9. I am currently coaching @joyicecloud and @jendiamond for @RailsGirlsSoC 9 Monday, August 12, 13
10. the history of women in computing 10 Monday, August 12, 13
11. 11 Monday, August 12, 13
12. 1800s 12 Monday, August 12, 13
13. 13 Monday, August 12, 13
14. Jacquard Loom 1801 14 Monday, August 12, 13
15. Analytical Engine 1837 15 Monday, August 12, 13
16. Ada Lovelace 16 Monday, August 12, 13
17. the first program. 17 Monday, August 12, 13
18. the first program. 18 Monday, August 12, 13
19. Lord Byron 19 Monday, August 12, 13
20. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” 20 Monday, August 12, 13
21. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” Blech! 21 Monday, August 12, 13
22. 22 Monday, August 12, 13
23. 23 Monday, August 12, 13
24. 24 Monday, August 12, 13
25. let’s jump ahead ~100 years to some of the next huge advancements in computing 25 Monday, August 12, 13
26. 26 Monday, August 12, 13
27. WWII United Kingdom computing advances 27 Monday, August 12, 13
28. 1939 Women’s Royal Naval Service 28 Monday, August 12, 13
29. 1939 Women’s Auxillary Air Force 29 Monday, August 12, 13
30. the Nazi’s blitz attack methods required a high level of coordination via radio telegraphy 30 Monday, August 12, 13
31. to keep secrets secret codes and ciphers were used for encryption 31 Monday, August 12, 13
32. 1938 Bletchley Park established as the UK’s code- breaking centre 32 Monday, August 12, 13
33. 1939 Alan Turning designed the Bombe, an electromechanical device used by cryptologist to decipher Enigma-encrypted messages 33 Monday, August 12, 13
34. 34 Monday, August 12, 13
35. 1944 Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital computer that was at all programmable, used by British code-breakers during WWII to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher 35 Monday, August 12, 13
36. 36 Monday, August 12, 13
37. after the War was over, all Bombes and Colossus computers were dismantled and their designs and manuals were burned 37 Monday, August 12, 13
38. it wasn’t until the 1970s that the work done at Bletchly Park was declassified and revealed to the general public 38 Monday, August 12, 13
39. in 1993 Bletchly Park opened as a museum devoted to the code- breakers, and you can see reconstructions of a Bombe and a Colossus there 39 Monday, August 12, 13
40. WWII United States computing advancements 40 Monday, August 12, 13
41. 1942 Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service 41 Monday, August 12, 13
42. computer historically means ‘one who computes’ 42 Monday, August 12, 13
43. human computers were used to calculate ballistic trajectories 43 Monday, August 12, 13
44. these human computers were almost exclusively women 44 Monday, August 12, 13
45. 45 Monday, August 12, 13
46. human computers took 40 hours to calculate one 60 second trajectory 46 Monday, August 12, 13
47. the differential analyzer sped up these calculations by mechanical calculation 47 Monday, August 12, 13
48. 48 Monday, August 12, 13
49. the differential analyzer took 15 minutes to calculate one 60 second trajectory 49 Monday, August 12, 13
50. the ENIAC sped up these calculations by electronic calculation 50 Monday, August 12, 13
51. Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer 51 Monday, August 12, 13
52. ENIAC was the world’s first first electronic general computer, which is to say that it was Turing complete 52 Monday, August 12, 13
53. 53 Monday, August 12, 13
54. the ENIAC took seconds to calculate one 60 second trajectory 54 Monday, August 12, 13
55. 1944 women human computers were hired to ‘set up’ the ENIAC to perform the calculations they had been doing by hand 55 Monday, August 12, 13
56. 56 Monday, August 12, 13
57. in the 1940’s the idea was prevalent that the development of hardware was the real business of computing 57 Monday, August 12, 13
58. Jon von Neuman said coding was a “static” process–one that could be performed by a low-level clerical worker 58 Monday, August 12, 13
59. Maurice Wilkes said, “It had not occurred to me that there was going to be an difficulty about getting programs working.” 59 Monday, August 12, 13
60. the women learned to ‘set up’ the ENIAC by studying block diagrams 60 Monday, August 12, 13
61. 61 Monday, August 12, 13
62. 62 Monday, August 12, 13
63. 63 Monday, August 12, 13
64. ENIAC had 18,000 vacuum tubes 20 accumulators 200 decade counters 64 Monday, August 12, 13
65. the women were integral to making the machine perform the intended calculations 65 Monday, August 12, 13
66. the women could debug the ENIAC down to the one failing vacuum tube out of 18,000 66 Monday, August 12, 13
67. the ENIAC was not shrouded in secrecy like the Colossus 67 Monday, August 12, 13
68. they worked around the clock for the first public demonstration to make sure that it went according to plan 68 Monday, August 12, 13
69. after the successful public demonstration, the women were not invited to the celebration dinner 69 Monday, August 12, 13
70. the women were also never given credit in press releases and were cropped out of photos 70 Monday, August 12, 13
71. 71 Monday, August 12, 13
72. it wasn’t until the 1990s that the women’s accomplishments were discovered and given the credit they deserved 72 Monday, August 12, 13
73. speaking of women getting the credit they deserve, this next woman deserves a lot of credit for her pioneering work 73 Monday, August 12, 13
74. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper 74 Monday, August 12, 13
75. Grace post-war 75 Monday, August 12, 13
76. 76 Monday, August 12, 13
77. the first compiler. 77 Monday, August 12, 13
78. the first compiler. 78 Monday, August 12, 13
79. Mother of COBOL 79 Monday, August 12, 13
80. one of the first programming languages. 80 Monday, August 12, 13
81. one of the first programming languages. *Lisp and Fortran in the same 3-year period. 81 Monday, August 12, 13
82. org xor ax, ax mov ds, ax mov si, msg boot_loop:lodsb or al, al jz go_flag mov ah, 0x0E int 0x10 jmp boot_loop go_flag: jmp go_flag msg db 'Hello, world', 13, 10, 0 times 510-($-$$) db 0 db 0x55 db 0xAA 82 Monday, August 12, 13
83. MAIN-LOGIC SECTION. DISPLAY "Hello, world" STOP RUN. 83 Monday, August 12, 13
84. puts “Hello, World” 84 Monday, August 12, 13
85. 85 Monday, August 12, 13
86. The beginning of the stereotypical software engineer. 86 Monday, August 12, 13
87. in the 1950’s the use of computers expanded beyond scientific use and computing entered the business world 87 Monday, August 12, 13
88. at first, the high demand for computer personnel left little room for sexual discrimination in hiring 88 Monday, August 12, 13
89. but obstacles began to stack up against women and gender discrimination appeared as a function of historical accident 89 Monday, August 12, 13
90. 90 Monday, August 12, 13
91. so what happened? 91 Monday, August 12, 13
92. the intellectual challenge of writing efficient code became apparent and employers now compared it to male-stereotyped activities such as chess-playing or mathematics 92 Monday, August 12, 13
93. male computer programmers sought to increase the prestige of their field by ‘professionalizing’ computing 93 Monday, August 12, 13
94. this partially means distancing the ‘programmer’ from the low status and gender associations of the ‘coder’ 94 Monday, August 12, 13
95. 95 Monday, August 12, 13
96. "It's just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so it's ready when you need it. Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail. Women are 'naturals' at computer programming." 96 Monday, August 12, 13
97. computer industry ad campaigns linked women staffers to human error and inefficiency 97 Monday, August 12, 13
98. aptitude tests were widely used, and they relied heavily on mathematical and logical skills 98 Monday, August 12, 13
99. personality tests were widely used, and they favored male traits 99 Monday, August 12, 13
100. the stereotype became self perpetuating that people who were good at programming were anti-social, masculine, and formally trained in mathematics 100 Monday, August 12, 13
101. programmers had to work at night to get unlimited access to the machines & many company policies did not allow women on the premises at night 101 Monday, August 12, 13
102. government-subsidized vocational programs targeted women, but did not provide proper training 102 Monday, August 12, 13
103. once the precent was set, the boy’s club self perpetuated and carried through to current day 103 Monday, August 12, 13
104. but that’s not to say there weren’t women doing awesome things in computing 104 Monday, August 12, 13
105. Ada Lovelace Adele Goldberg Adele Goldstine Alexandra Illmer Forsythe Alice Burks Anita Borg Barbara Liskov Barbara Simons Beatrice Helen Worsley Betsy Ancker-Johnson Betty Jennings Betty Snyder Carly Fiorina Carol Bartz Cynthia Breazeal Denise Denton Diane Greene Edith Clarke Ellen Ochoa Erna Schneider Hoover Eva Tardos Evelyn Boyd Granville Evi Nemeth Fran Bilas Frances E. Allen Frances Elizabeth Holberton Frances Spence Ginni Rometty Grace Hopper Hedy Lamarr Irene Greif Janie Tsao Jean Bartik Jean E. Sammet Jeannette Wing Joan Margaret Winters Joyce Currie Little Karen Spärck Jones Katherine Johnson Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli Leah Jamieson Lenore Blum Lucy Sanders Lynn Conway Manuela Veloso Margaret R. Fox Maria Klawe Marlyn Meltzer Marlyn Wescoff Mary Jane Irwin Mary K. Hawes Mary Lou Jespen Meg Whitman Nancy Lynch Padmasree Warrior Radia Perlman Rosalind W. Picard Ruth Lichterman Ruth Teitelbaum Rósa Péter Sandra Kurtzig Sara Catz Shafi Goldwasser Shafrira Goldwasser Sister Mary Kenneth Keller Sophie Vandebroek Susan Dumais Susan Landau Thelma Estrin Wendy Hall Yafeng Sun 105 Monday, August 12, 13
106. so how can we change the future? let’s look at some programs that have worked. 106 Monday, August 12, 13
107. 1995 a study began at Carnegie Mellon University to understand the gender imbalance 107 Monday, August 12, 13
108. part way through the study they made some changes to admission standards 108 Monday, August 12, 13
109. they made some changes to admission standards - prior programming experience + catch-up courses 109 Monday, August 12, 13
110. 110 Monday, August 12, 13
111. 111 Monday, August 12, 13
112. 2006 Maria Klawe became president of Harvey Mudd College 112 Monday, August 12, 13
113. introductory courses split up students with previous experience and students without 113 Monday, August 12, 13
114. nearly 20% more women are earning computer science degrees at Harvey Mudd than before Maria Klawe became president 114 Monday, August 12, 13
115. right meow there are lot of programs by women for women like http://railsgirls.com http://railsbridge.org http://girldevelopit.com 115 Monday, August 12, 13
116. they specifically invite women and provide a safe community to help women learn to program 116 Monday, August 12, 13
117. 2014 117 Monday, August 12, 13
118. 118 Monday, August 12, 13
119. We have accepted that diversity in the programming community helps everyone. 119 Monday, August 12, 13
120. We have ensured that the Ruby community is inviting to new programmers. 120 Monday, August 12, 13
121. We have realized that we are not in an elite club & anyone can join. 121 Monday, August 12, 13
122. We have ensured that the Ruby community fights to retain its members. 122 Monday, August 12, 13
123. We have realized: That ‘good programmers’ come in many forms, and may not think or look like us. 123 Monday, August 12, 13
124. So how can we change the future? Be respectful & encourage others to be respectful 124 Monday, August 12, 13
125. “If you think you don’t have biases, that’s your biggest bias.” - @avdi 125 Monday, August 12, 13
126. 101 RR Diversity with Ashe Dryden http://rubyrogues.com/ 101-rr-diversity-with-ashe-dryden/ Anti-Oppression 101 by Lindsey Bieda & Steve Klabnik http://confreaks.com/videos/1089- madisonruby2012-anti-opression-101 126 Monday, August 12, 13
127. 127 Monday, August 12, 13
128. Thank you. @eliseworthy & @jlsuttles 128 Monday, August 12, 13