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Already, though, the “masculinization process” of the computing industry was underway. The severe limitations of memory and processing power in the machines of the day demanded Mel the Real Programmer’s wizardry; John Backus described programming in the fifties as “a black art, a private arcane matter … [in which] the success of a program depended primarily on the programmer’s private techniques and inventions.”23 The aptitude tests used by the industry to identify potential Mels consisted primarily of mathematical and logical puzzles, which often required a formal education in these disciplines; even Cosmopolitan magazine, despite its breezy confidence about the absence of sexism in computing, recognized this as a barrier to entry for its readers. An industry analyst argued that the “Darwinian selection” of perso
As Ensmenger puts it:
It is almost certainly the case that these [personality] profiles represented, at best, deeply flawed scientific methodology. But they almost equally certainly created a gender-biased feedback cycle that ultimately selected for programmers with stereotypically masculine characteristics. The primary selection mechanism used by the industry selected for antisocial, mathematically inclined males, and therefore antisocial, mathematically inclined males were over-represented in the programmer population; this in turn reinforced the popular perception that programmers ought to be antisocial and mathematically inclined (and therefore male), and so on ad infinitum.25
The surly male genius, though, was perceived as a threat by corporate managers, especially as the initial enthusiasm over computerization gave way to doubts about actual value being produced for the companies spending the money. A programmer-turned-management-consultant described the long-haired computer wonks as a “Cosa Nostra” holding management to ransom, and warned that computer geeks were “at once the most unmanageable and the most poorly managed specialism in our society. Actors and artists pale by comparison.”26 Managers should “refuse to embark on grandiose or unworthy schemes, and refuse to let their recalcitrant charges waste skill, money and time on the fashionable idiocies of our [computer] racket.”27
The solution that everyone agreed upon was professionalization. Managers liked the idea of standardization, testing, and certification; it would reduce their dependence on arty individuals practising arcana: “The concept of professionalism affords a business-like answer to the existing and future computer skills market.”28 Programmers wanted to be recognized as something other than mere technicians — the rewards would be “status, greater autonomy, improved opportunities for advancement, and better pay.”29 Within academia, researchers were struggling to establish computer science as a distinct discipline and establish a theoretical foundation for their work. So, “an activity originally intended to be performed by low-status, clerical — and more often than not, female — [workers],” Ensmenger tells us:
was gradually and deliberately transformed into a high-status, scientific, and masculine discipline.
As Margaret Rossiter and others have suggested, professionalization nearly always requires the exclusion of women …
As computer programmers constructed a professional identity for themselves during the crucial decades of the 1950s and 1960s … they also constructed a gender identity. Masculinity was just one of many resources that they drew on to distance their profession from its low-status origins in clerical data processing. The question of “who made for a good programmer” increasingly involved in its answer the qualifier “male.”30
In 1892, a British colonial official named Sir Lepel Griffin wrote:
The characteristics of women which disqualify them for public life and its responsibilities are inherent in their sex and are worthy of honour, for to be womanly is the highest praise for a woman, as to be masculine is her worst reproach. But when men, as the Bengalis, are disqualified for political enfranchisement by the possession of essentially feminine characteristics, they must expect to be held in such contempt by stronger and braver races, who have fought for such liberties as they have won or retained.31
Sir Griffin was certain that Bengalis were unfit for political power because they were effeminate, weak, and it was unthinkable that they might “represent … precede … and govern the martial races of India”—that is, certain other ethnic groups within India who were deemed sufficiently warlike by the English. If a Bengali were to demonstrate such aspirations to equality, “then the English, as the common conqueror and master of all, may justly laugh at his pretensions and order him to take the humbler place which better suits a servile race which has never struck a blow against an enemy.”32
The gender politics of the Raj were of course much on my mind while I wrote my first novel in the late eighties and early nineties, as I traveled back and forth between India and America. The British “Cult of Manliness” had been an essential component of the creed of Empire, which — as above — conflated masculinity, violence, civic virtue, and morality. Even intelligence and intellectual capability were inextricably intertwined with masculinity; women and all others who exhibited symptoms of femininity were fuzzy headed, illogical, and easily overcome by emotion; they were incapable especially of scientific reasoning and therefore self-knowledge and progress. The state of the world — women without power, Englishmen ruling Indians — bore out the truth of these propositions.
By now, I’d read my Edward Said, and I prided myself on being aware of the ideological mechanisms that transformed local contingencies of history and culture into Nature itself. The attractions of Nick Carter, Killmaster, seemed altogether more sinister now that I had listened to many scholarly deconstructions of imperial American masculinity. But at the time, I didn’t question much the demographics of programming. The meetings of the special interest groups of HAL-PC devoted to programming were all-male; I think in all my years of consulting work I met one female programmer. This was just the way things were. The male programmers I met were often astonishingly generous with knowledge and technical advice, and yet, the very same men were also abrupt and outright rude. Indians are frequently taken aback by the American virtues of quick intimacy and bluntness, which come across as shockingly bad ma
This unfortunate condition has only intensified over the decades. The “masculinization process” that Ensmenger describes has resulted in a contemporary American culture of programming that is overwhelmingly male, as one can see at conferences, on websites and blogs. The metaphors used within this world of one-man armies are very often martial. Teams working against impossible deadlines go on “death marches.” Finding and fixing defects in software is a pains-taking, detail-oriented task, one which Grace Hopper might have compared to housekeeping; but in the parlance of many programming shops, the most proficient bug sweepers are “bug slayers.”