History: elaborate on women in programming

[amyjko]

While I did like the part about women in programming, I felt that it should have been talked about some more.  Women used to be at the forefront of all of the programming.  Now, things have changed and the stereotypical programmer is a man.  I would have liked more of an exploration of this topic, such as more details about how the history has come to be forgotten, and why the narrative has changed and shifted.  Sexism is a broad answer; what was the turning point?

Because how does one exclude and erase the work done by an entire group of people, it sounds like a bigger force played a part in it happening and I feel like that it should be discussed as a part of the history of software development.

I would like to see more focus on how women ended up being excluded from the software engineering industry for so long despite them contributing so much to the early efforts of digital computing. The following paragraph discusses the difficulties with the human aspects of software engineering and I wonder if that ties in with the exclusion of women (and possibly minorities too since I don't seem to hear a lot about them).

The sixth paragraph addresses how software has created disruptive changes for Black Americans, White entrepreneurs, academia, and women. I believe this paragraph groups Black Americans and women, and brushes over intersectionality, insinuating racial and gender discrimination as entirely separate issues. I believe it would be beneficial to specifically address how intersectionality can further suppress and exclude women of color in software engineering.

I think it would be interesting to mention how the popularization of software engineering shifted the gatekeeping of who was allowed to learn and participate. Additionally, how did marginalized groups circumvent the gatekeeping? How do you practice computing when computers are already relatively inaccessible during that time period? Furthermore, Margaret Hamilton is the main highlighted figure in the chapter (which I love and appreciate the diversity!), but I wonder if there were any criticisms towards her work due to more outward sexism that zeitgeist? These are loaded questions, and the main topic of the chapter is still about the general history of software engineering, but I'd love to see a deeper dive!