The Niels Bohr Archive
History of Science Seminar

Fri 18 March 2011, 14.15
Aud. A, Niels Bohr Institute
Blegdamsvej 17, Copenhagen

Thomas J. Misa
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota

"Gender and Computing: Two Histories & Future Prospects"

Policy makers have been concerned for decades about the status and
participation of women in science and engineering fields. Computing is
distinctive in that understanding two histories is necessary to understand
the "problem." The first history involves the unusual prominence of women in
early computing and the strong participation of women in computing education
and the computing workforce to around the mid-1980s or slightly beyond.
Since then, in most advanced industrial societies, women's participation in
computing has been stalled or slipping -- this is the second history that
needs examination -- even while women continue modest gains in other
technical fields. This paper draws on international perspectives to evaluate
popular images of computer "nerds," several varieties of sexism, and a
striking gap between mass-media images and actual practices in the field.

Thomas J. Misa is director of the Charles Babbage Institute at the
University of Minnesota, where he teaches in the graduate Program for the
History of Science, Technology and Medicine and is a faculty member in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He recently published an
international collaborative volume entitled Gender Codes: Why Women are
Leaving Computing (Wiley/IEEE Computer Society Press, 2010). The second
revised edition of his Leonardo to the Internet is forthcoming in July from
Johns Hopkins University Press