Ignored in History
Title: Ignored in History, the women behind computing
date: 2023-03-06
type: literature
✿ This note couldn't be made without our classmate Rowan, and more specifically, her sending me the article "When Computers Were Women" after I posed a question in class about this topic. Please visit her memex and check out her thoughts on this article as well!
A simple question of "Why?" entered my mind when we discussed the erasure of women in computing in class. It was hard for me to fathom just how much work done by women has been left unappreciated or untold. With the war there were not many men around to perform the jobs of computing and programming, but as mentioned by Dr. Graham, the history of women computers went further back than just the wartime.
It astounds me that as soon as this field was feminized, the appreciation for the labour associated with it declined. Most of these women were solving complex math equations, were inventors and innovators, and were educators for those learning the tech.
Citational Information¶
Light, Jennifer S. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture, vol. 40, no. 3, 1999, pp. 455–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147356. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.