Tech bros’ attitude to female colleagues stuck in dark ages::Research sheds light on attitudes holding industry back

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    51 year ago

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    It is still 2023, yet anyone familiar with the industry over the last 30 years may feel a sense of déjà vu when reading the findings of a report by The Fawcett Society charity and telecoms biz Virgin Media O2.

    It claimed: “By seeing more female role models in tech, young girls will start to see IT as a realistic and attractive career option.”

    Those daring enough to delve deeper into history will find that far from women being “naturally less well suited” to the industry, they actually helped found it and provided the backbone of its early workforce.

    Historian Mar Hicks, associate professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, has plotted how women staffed early IT departments during the 1950s because the work was seen as uninspiring and lacking in career cachet.

    Among her employees was Ann Moffatt, who coded the black box recorder for the Anglo-French supersonic passenger jet Concorde.

    The “move fast and break things” culture embodying post-millennium tech claims to be the great disruptor in everything – except the numbing predictability of sexism.


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