Computing is one of the only scientific fields which was once female-dominated. In the 30s and 40s, women made up the bulk of the workforce doing complex, tedious calculations in the fields including ballistics, astrophysics, aeronautics (think Hidden Figures) and code-breaking. Engineers themselves found that the female computers were far more reliable than themselves in doing such calculations [9]. As computing machines became available, there was no precedent set for the gender of a computer operator, and so the women previously doing the computing became the computer operators [10].

However, this was not to last. As computing became commercialised in the 50s, the skill required for computing work was starting to be recognised. As written in [1]:

“Software company System Development Corp. (SDC) contracted psychologists William Cannon and Dallis Perry to create an aptitude assessment for optimal programmers. Cannon and Perry interviewed 1,400 engineers — 1,200 of them men — and developed a “vocational interest scale,” a personality profile to predict the best potential programmers. Unsurprisingly given their male-dominated test group, Cannon and Perry’s assessment disproportionately identified men as the ideal candidates for engineering jobs. In particular, the test tended to eliminate extroverts and people who have empathy for others. Cannon and Perry’s paper concluded that typical programmers “don’t like people,” forming today’s now pervasive stereotype of a nerdy, anti-social coder.”

Throughout the pandemic, the statistics on division of childcare and home-schooling responsibilities have been shocking: mothers are taking on 150% more homeschooling than fathers (1), while 71% of working mothers’ furlough applications were rejected (2).  A third of working mothers reported having lost  some or all work due to a lack of childcare during the pandemic, with this figure rising to 44% for  BAME mothers. On top of this, 90% of the UK’s 2 million single parents are women (3). These unequal divisions are threatening to undo decades of progress towards gender equality.

In April 2019, the pay gap between men and women in the UK was 17.3% (4), and at the current rate of gender pay gap reduction, the gap will not be closed until 2052 (5).  The causes of this gap continue to be unequal caring responsibilities,  more women in low-paid work and (illegal) discrimination. BAME women are also subject to the ethnicity pay gap.  While this varies regionally and by ethnicity, in London in 2018 the overall figure was 23% (6).