The authors explore the proposition that computers have the potential for creating inequity in classroom education and in who is encouraged to pursue the study of computer science itself. They outline some psychological factors that have contributed to the inequality regarding gender and computers.

This open access book presents a systematic investigation into internationally comparable data gathered in ICILS 2013. It identifies differences in female and male students’ use of, perceptions about, and proficiency in using computer technologies. Teachers’ use of computers, and their perceptions regarding the benefits of computer use in education, are also analyzed by gender. When computer technology was first introduced in schools, there was a prevailing belief that information and communication technologies were ‘boys’ toys’; boys were assumed to have more positive attitudes toward using computer technologies. As computer technologies have become more established throughout societies, gender gaps in students’ computer and information literacy appear to be closing, although studies into gender differences remain sparse. The IEA’s International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) is designed to discover how well students are prepared for study, work, and life in the digital age. Despite popular beliefs, a critical finding of ICILS 2013 was that internationally girls tended to score more highly than boys, so why are girls still not entering technology-based careers to the same extent as boys? Readers will learn how male and female students differ in their computer literacy (both general and specialized) and use of computer technology, and how the perceptions held about those technologies vary by gender.

The untold history of women and computing: how pioneering women succeeded in a field shaped by gender biases. Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and hold proportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male “computer geek” seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States and Britain. Indeed, programming in postwar years was considered woman's work (perhaps in contrast to the more manly task of building the computers themselves). In Recoding Gender, Janet Abbate explores the untold history of women in computer science and programming from the Second World War to the late twentieth century. Demonstrating how gender has shaped the culture of computing, she offers a valuable historical perspective on today's concerns over women's underrepresentation in the field. Abbate describes the experiences of women who worked with the earliest electronic digital computers: Colossus, the wartime codebreaking computer at Bletchley Park outside London, and the American ENIAC, developed to calculate ballistics. She examines postwar methods for recruiting programmers, and the 1960s redefinition of programming as the more masculine “software engineering.” She describes the social and business innovations of two early software entrepreneurs, Elsie Shutt and Stephanie Shirley; and she examines the career paths of women in academic computer science. Abbate's account of the bold and creative strategies of women who loved computing work, excelled at it, and forged successful careers will provide inspiration for those working to change gendered computing culture.

The computing profession faces a serious gender crisis. Today, fewer women enter computing than anytime in the past 25 years. This book provides an unprecedented look at the history of women and men in computing, detailing how the computing profession emerged and matured, and how the field became male coded. Women's experiences working in offices, education, libraries, programming, and government are examined for clues on how and where women succeeded—and where they struggled. It also provides a unique international dimension with studies examining the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Greece. Scholars in history, gender/women's studies, and science and technology studies, as well as department chairs and hiring directors will find this volume illuminating.

This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

This open access book presents a systematic investigation into internationally comparable data gathered in ICILS 2013. It identifies differences in female and male students’ use of, perceptions about, and proficiency in using computer technologies. Teachers’ use of computers, and their perceptions regarding the benefits of computer use in education, are also analyzed by gender. When computer technology was first introduced in schools, there was a prevailing belief that information and communication technologies were ‘boys’ toys’; boys were assumed to have more positive attitudes toward using computer technologies. As computer technologies have become more established throughout societies, gender gaps in students’ computer and information literacy appear to be closing, although studies into gender differences remain sparse. The IEA’s International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) is designed to discover how well students are prepared for study, work, and life in the digital age. Despite popular beliefs, a critical finding of ICILS 2013 was that internationally girls tended to score more highly than boys, so why are girls still not entering technology-based careers to the same extent as boys? Readers will learn how male and female students differ in their computer literacy (both general and specialized) and use of computer technology, and how the perceptions held about those technologies vary by gender.

This monograph includes nine papers delivered at a National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) preconference workshop, and a previously unpublished paper on gender and attitudes. The papers, which are presented in four categories, are: (1) "Report on the Workshop: In Search of Gender Free Paradigms for Computer Science Education" (C. Dianne Martin); (2) "Understanding Gender Biases in Computer-Related Behavior: Are We Using the Wrong Metaphor?" (Robin Kay); (3) "Gender Differences in Human Computer Interaction" (Charles W. Huff, John H. Fleming, and Joel Cooper); (4) "Gender and Attitude Toward Computers" (James R. Aman); (5) "Female Students' Underachievement in Computer Science and Mathematics: Reasons and Recommendations" (Lesley S. Klein); (6) "Implications of the Computer Culture for Women of Color" (Carol Edwards); (7) "Strategies for Involving Girls in Computer Science" (Valerie Clark); (8) "A New Introduction to Computer Science" (Danielle R. Bernstein); (9) "Restructuring Departments for Equality" (Henry Etzkowitz, Carol Kemelgor, Michael Neuschatz, and Brian Uzzi); and (10) "Gender Equity--A Partial List of Resources" (Cindy Meyer Hanchey). An additional paper and report are appended: "Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices within the Computer Culture" (Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert); and "Becoming a Computer Scientist: A Report by the ACM Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Science" (Amy Pearl, Martha Pollack, Eve Riskin, Becky Thomas, Elizabeth Wolf, and Alice Wu). The gender equity resources listed include books, articles, and brochures; training modules; technical assistance modules; publications from the National Science Foundation; and organizations. (ALF)