This is when moms started joining the workforce. Educated in the 60s and beyond.
But there were already many women participating in the workforce, particularly as teachers, nurses, and clerical workers. Women formed the backbone of the war machine for World War II--and were basically kicked out of those jobs when the fighting ended, whether or not they wanted to be. The concept of women working wasn't foreign back then; it was the concept of women doing jobs they weren't supposed to do that was the big sticking point.
A woman invented half of the computer junk we use today at Xerox parc. Some of the greatest programmers of the past 40 years have been women.
Yes, absolutely yes! Until the 60's, this was completely true, because programming was viewed as women's work! Then something happened, and women dropped like flies from the ranks of computer programming. Did they suddenly stop being good programmers, or was something else going on?
I work for a giant company. Huge. You may have heard of us. Its women all up and down. Management and Tech.
I'm going to guess that you're with a Fortune 500 company, then. Consider this Senate testimony that goes into considerable detail as to the persistent gender challenges faced by women in large corporations in America, particularly in professional and higher-level positions. It includes data pulled from the Fortune 500, and goes into painstaking detail as to the disparities--both in numbers of women and their compensation--that continue to exist in large corporations.
Yes it's EDUCATION for women. Everything else follows. You want women in tech, incentivize them to LEARN TECH so they may achieve MERIT.
That's absolutely part of the solution, but it's only part of the solution. Those of us already in the tech sector need to be asking ourselves exactly why, for an industry that repeatedly insists that it is rooted on merit, we look so very different from the society in which we exist.
Further, there exists a clear and significant disparity between women and men pursuing CS degrees--a gap that didn't exist until the 90's. Something happened, and "well, that's just how things played out" doesn't cut it for me.
To focus on one industry is just bizarre handwaving.
Oh, this is a problem across many industries, but that doesn't mean we're somehow absolved of trying to get our own house in order. Further, we have some unique challenges of our own in this regard--the large drop in CS college enrollment, for example.
And the understanding that if gender doesn't want to get involved in a subject it doesn't mean we should establish a quota.
Oh, I recommended a quota? I must be getting old. I have no memory of doing any such thing.
Let's work on getting women in the middle east educated first.
Yes, we wouldn't want to overtax ourselves with doing more than one thing at the same time.
OK? Can we just cut the nonsense?
That would be wonderful.