What is one thing that Hicks talked about that you didn’t know before?

What is one thing that Hicks talked about that you didn’t know before?

After listening to Hicks lecture on computing specifically in the UK, it’s surprising to learn that women worked on the first computers and undertook all the underlying processes that work towards improving the performance of the machines ranging from the assembling, troubleshooting and even operation.  It’s impressive to learn that women worked on new and cutting-edge technology before even the world knew about its existence, and were instrumental in changing the outcome of World War II.  Learning that it was their operations with these computers that changed geopolitical events and brought about a victory alters my whole perspective of the field.

Why is your new perspective important?

The new perspective is essential because it helps to unravel erroneous myths that I have fostered over the years about women in IT being the exception and not the norm. My dynamics of the computing world has changed from where I saw the field as a male speciality with women trying to only make inroads in the recent decades to where I see women being a necessary foundation of the area.

Still, yet the system has systematically pushed them out.

In what ways do earlier ideas about coding as “unskilled,” low-value women’s work differ from how we think about coding today?

A comparison of the past and present views of computer coding shows that the view and perception of the job have drastically changed. In the past, the role of coding was seen as tedious and of low value and therefore relegated to women. In this era, women dominated the field and were charged with the duty of carrying out these tasks.  However, as the leadership caught wind of the importance of this task, they started recruiting technocrats to fill the positions and take up these roles. Therefore, while the job had very little value then, its importance which informs the current perception has seen it rise to where it is viewed as a critical task.  Further, while the past saw the field majorly dominated by women and a low grade, today it is a predominantly male-dominated field and of the high-grade operations in firms.

How does the idea of institutional discrimination play out in the story Hicks’ tells?

Hicks tells the story of computing development in the UK and how the system changed from being a women dominated sector and job to a male-dominated field. Hicks shows the role that institutionalizes discrimination has played in pushing women out of the area and turning it into a male-dominated field.

She asserts that although the UK had been on the forefront of computing, British technology fell back in the seventies due to systematically pushing out the women workforce.  Before, women played a critical role in the computing world since the jobs were seen as unappealing and deskilled that men did not want them. As such, women were charged with all the duties, including teaching companies to use their programs and computers. However, institutional discrimination has seen the role of these women and their stories lost to where they are seen as peripheral and engaged in window dressing

As leaders perceived that the technical work was more important than they did before, this discrimination saw them work to push women who were seen as low skilled out of the posts and bring it, men. As such, women did not receive any opportunities to advance their careers; they were excluded from the pool of hiring.  Structural discrimination was embedded into the system through meritocracy and technology was used to protect the prevailing power structure. Hicks asserts that rather than being a flaw in the system, the discrimination was programmed as a feature.

References

Hicks, M. (2017). Book Talk: Programmed Inequality, Oxford Internet Institute, the University of Oxford Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vCDHJ4-D80