Janet Abbate, Virginia Tech
In the first decades of computer programming from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, the work was not clearly gendered male or female, and significant numbers of women took computing jobs. This paper describes how female computer programmers struggled to balance their desire for equality in the workplace with the realities of ubiquitous and legal discrimination. Female programmers faced issues such as unequal pay, inflexible policies toward motherhood, and sexist attitudes, yet there is little evidence of overt feminist politics among early programmers. While this may have reflected a defensive strategy of trying to fit in, it also stemmed from women’s perception that programming was a welcoming field relative to the available alternatives—liberating rather than oppressive. Many women were grateful for the intellectual and professional opportunities computing offered, perceived themselves to be appreciated for their contributions, and felt a strong collegial bond with co-workers of both sexes. They tended to avoid direct confrontation and instead fought sexism indirectly by creating alternative career paths and institutions for themselves within computing.

This paper considers the successes and limitations of these alternative strategies in creating a more equitable work environment for women in computing. Women’s perceptions of computing and professional experiences are drawn from interviews of American and British programmers, supplemented by statistical evidence comparing conditions for women in computing with other fields; public representations of computing work and its gender dimensions draw on advertisements, news articles, popular books, and movies. I argue that gender politics in computing workplaces were mediated by women’s identity as technical professionals. On the one hand, technical skill and a tight labor market empowered female programmers to improve their status when they did encounter patriarchal obstacles. These workers could leverage their technical expertise to negotiate with employers and to persuade clients to accept nontraditional business arrangements. On the other hand, women shared with male colleagues a professional identity as mathematicians/programmers in a field whose gender image was ambiguous, which tended to discourage an explicit feminist politics. The arcane nature of the work also made women’s achievements in computing less visible to the culture at large, undermining their potential to act as feminist role models.

Women who made careers in programming often saw it as an inherently advantageous profession for women, stimulating and well-paid; for them, therefore, encouraging more women to enter the field could be considered a feminist aim in itself. Yet the continuing underrepresentation of women in the field—despite its intellectual and financial attractions—reflects structural inequalities, most notably a lack of accommodation for childrearing, that only an overt feminist politics could change on a large scale. Nonetheless, in the era before second-wave feminism, women’s creative strategies in programming did create significant career opportunities and implicitly challenged male-oriented workplaces practices at a local level.