WWU Association for Gender Inclusion in Computing

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Gender demographics in CS once looked very different than they do today...

Women have played important roles in the history of computer science from the beginning, but their contributions have been historically undervalued.

The first recognized programmer was Ada Lovelace. She was an English mathematician and writer in the 1800s and is credited as the author of the first ever published algorithm.

Ada Lovelace

In 1945, the six programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (the ENIAC) were women known as 'computer girls' -- none of whom were invited to the unveiling of the ENIAC or recognized for their contributions (until the mid 80s).

Four of the original computer girls

The inventor of the first compiler (and the word 'compiler' itself) was Grace Hopper. Also, in 1959, one of the first standardized programming language was created at a conference that Hopper took part.

Grace Hopper

Up until the 1960s, programming was actually considered a good profession for women because it was viewed as an easy job that was not physically strenuous, like typing or filing.

The share of female computer science majors peaked at 37% in 1983, and it started falling roughly the same period of time that personal computers grew showed up in U.S. homes.

line graph showing the percent of female CS majors peaking in 1983 at 37%

Early personal computers weren't much more than toys, featuring pong, simple shooting games, perhaps simple word processing. These toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.

This gender imbalance carried over when those kids entered college. As personal computers became more common, computer science professors increasingly assumed that their students had grown up playing with computers at home. Male students then had a head start over to their their female counterparts because they had been exposed to computers before. The association of masculine personality characteristics with inherent programming ability increased, and the narrative shifted until programming was no longer primarily feminine work but masculine.

Since the peak at 37% in 1983, the percentage of female CS majors still hasn't recovered (yet), and it is sitting around 18% as of 2022.

It is unfortunately difficult to find data on non-binary, intersex, trans, and gender-nonconforming people in tech (and in general) because of lacking research, but a 2020 Stanford report found that nonbinary students made up less than 1% of its computer science majors.