Lady Business: How women invented computing; an outlier in Silicon Valley; NASA heroines
Hello and welcome to Lady Business, a newsletter about women, the business world, and all the ways they overlap. This is the first issue, published October 5, 2017.
Happy (Almost) Ada Lovelace Day!
"Some female programmers of the 1950s and 1960s would have scoffed at the notion that programming would ever be considered a masculine occupation.”
--Janet Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing
I have an article near and dear to my heart in this month's issue of Inc. magazine: a look at the history of how women once formed the backbone of the early computer programming industry, and how they got pushed out.
The oft-cited number is 37 percent: In 1984, women accounted for more than a third of all computer science graduates. Yet as coding became a more popular major, and career, women somehow went missing. Today, we're only about 18 percent of computer science grads. This chart from our article, based on Department of Education data, is particularly stark.
The modern computer programming industry started during World War II, when men were drafted for combat--so women were the ones who got hired to sit in offices doing the math and moving the punch cards that made the early computers work. When the war ended and the men came home, women in other parts of the workforce lost their Rosie-the-Riveter jobs. But in the newborn computing industry, where there was a big demand for labor and no entrenched men, women could still get hired.
The other thing that helped women, at least until computing became cool, and thus, male: this sort of programming was seen as clerical and low-skill, despite the mathematical skills and aptitude tests it required. Men found it easier to get promoted, of course, and often had fancier titles...but for every company that had a computing department in the 1960s and 70s, the precursors to today's rows of hoodie-and-headphone-clad programmers were rows of ladies wearing nylons.
Virgina Tech professor Abbate, who I interviewed for this article, has a great academic book explaining what happened next, including some interviews with women who ran their own programming firms. Speaking of...
Pink Hair, Don’t Care
"Why have a modest ambition?" she shrugs. "Because then you accomplish it, and it's boring."
Also in this month's Inc., I profile Therese Tucker, the founder and CEO of tech "unicorn" BlackLine, an accounting-software firm. Despite the boring nature of her company, Tucker is a tremendously fun and fascinating person (The hair! Anti-death-penalty advocacy! Tesla lawsuits!) who obviously sticks out in this era of rampant Silicon Valley sexist everything. She's also a, yup, computer programmer who invented a new type of software, and who built a company now worth over $1.5 billion.
Another thing that makes Tucker an outlier: She's one of the only female CEOs in the entire tech industry, let alone one of the only women to run and take public a company she founded. The only other woman founder/CEO to take a tech company public in recent memory is Sheila Lirio Marcelo of Care.com; Stitch Fix's Katrina Lake may be the next.
More Hidden Figures
"These women, some of the top female pilots in the United States, were not anomalies. The pool was a small one compared to the number of men who flew planes, but when Dr. Randolph Lovelace, a pioneer in aeromedicine, decided to select female pilots to undergo the physical testing to become astronaut candidates, he still had more than 700 to choose from.
"The 13 women he ultimately selected to undergo punishing physical and psychological testing...were some of the most experienced, accomplished pilots in the country. It made sense that these women should take the next step and go to outer space.
"But it was 1959."
The Houston Press's Dianna Wray has an excellent history of, and update on, the women who almost became the first astronauts. These women have haunted my knowledge of space history, and my enjoyment of any related entertainment, since childhood. (Martha Ackmann has an extensive book about the so-called Mercury 13.)
Lady Bits
--This Eater profile of Milk Bar's Christina Tosi is great; I was especially struck by the description of Tosi's "old-timey face that evokes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring (especially when her hair's covered by a bandana)."
--What I'm reading: I devoured Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go in an afternoon; it successfully plays with structure in a way that a lot of first novelists, especially, can't quite pull off. But I'm still stuck in the middle of my first Elena Ferrante. "You're going to love those books," said a nice woman on the subway, who picked up my dropped bookmark. I do not, yet.
--What I'm watching: Belatedly, Big Little Lies. Yes, it may be "the whitest show to ever white," as @AriginalGangsta put it last week. But I'm enjoying seeing the show flit between mommy-focused melodrama with social-justice overtones, and Nancy Meyers-esque lifestyle porn. (I too would like to contemplate dark secrets while in possession of an oversized turtleneck, an oversized wineglass, and an oversized patio overlooking the Pacific.)
--Finally, happy Twilight-iversary to @therightsteph, who coined the name and part of the idea for this newsletter over drinks way too long ago. She doesn't look or write or spell her name the same way that Twilight author Stephenie Meyer does...but as she's found on Twitter, Twilight fans aren't always the best at reading comprehension.
In honor of #Twilight's 12 year anniversary tomorrow, my first Moment: ⚡️ “People ask me questions about vampires”https://t.co/RjK2pCoSqF
— Stephanie Meyers (@theRightSteph) October 4, 2017
E.g.:
@theRightSteph can u please explain to me how Edward can perpetually go to high school, doesn't he have paperwork or some kind of record???
— Gilly (@trillgill12) August 27, 2017
Thanks for reading Lady Business! I'd love to hear what you think, and what you'd like to read about: maria.aspan@gmail.com. If you know people who would enjoy reading this, they can sign up here.