[Haskell-cafe] Are there any female Haskellers?

[Jason Dusek]

2010/03/27 Leon Smith <leon.p.smith at gmail.com>:
> I've heard rumors that in the early days of programming, that
> women were in the majority, or at least they represented a
> much greater proportion of programmers than they do now. I
> seem to recall that this started to change sometime in the
> 60s. Of course, I can't recall when or where I heard these
> stories, and I'm not sure that my source was reliable, so I
> might be completely off on this count.

  Women have been "computers" for a long time but they were not
  generally the majority or even very well represented.

    http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-female-computers

  In the Second World War, however, this changed; many, many
  women were brought into the "computer corps" and the first six
  programmers of the ENIAC, all women, were drawn from that
  corps.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

  So it may have happened that women started out as the majority
  of programmers and maintained that role for awhile; but as
  computing evolved more men came to desire the position. Of
  course, all the bosses were still men; they might prefer to
  hire other men. Coupled with conservative attitudes about
  women at work, programming would've become more and more
  hostile for women and maybe they were motivated to leave.

  A friend of mine, an engineer now in San Francisco, used to
  work in defense in Australia. The defense industry there is
  apparently as conservative as it is in the United States.
  There were alot of people around who felt that women needn't
  be in the work place or have jobs like mechatronic engineer.
  She was greatly motivated to leave. In the forties, where
  would she have gone?

--
Jason Dusek