Invisible women 2: Cognitive Surplus

I've just read Clay Shirky's 2010 book Cognitive Surplus: creativity and generosity in a connected age. The short summary of the book is: since the 50's people have had more and more leisure time. Until recently that leisure time was taken up with the passive activity of watching television. The Internet has given us the possibility to use our leisure time for social and creative activities, like creating Wikipedia, engaging in online discussion, and even creating lolcats.

Yet I have to ask: how could a smart, well-read professor write an entire book about what people do with their leisure time and not address the well-known and well-documented gender inequality in time available? The OECD did an entire report on what is called "unpaid labor:"

"Most unpaid work is cooking and cleaning – on average 2 hours 8 minutes work per day across the OECD – followed by care for household members at 26 minutes per day. Shopping takes up 23 minutes per day across the OECD on average" Visualized it looks like:

(The left-hand column is minutes, and obviously not all countries are listed.  The full data is available as an Excel file.)

The Economist put it more bluntly (and I do think this image is unnecessarily demeaning, but I haven't found one with the same message that is more neutral):

If they had read Shirky's book, this fellow would have been sitting at his computer, updating Wikipedia pages or adding his cognitive surplus to a discussion group on health issues. But he still would have had more leisure time than a woman.

A social world based on "cognitive surplus" will be one that is not gender neutral. It will have more participation by males, and therefore will be socially skewed to the masculine -- at least until we have gender parity in taking care of the home, the children, the elderly, etc. That is something that I would expect an intelligent observer of society to notice. Not only notice, but to ponder: what does this tell us about the nature of the things being created with this cognitive surplus? Does this explain, in whole or in part, the masculine view of "hacking," the participation in Open Source, the gender nature of games and gaming? 

** I woke up this morning realizing something that is both not in this book but that I hadn't mentioned: the difference in leisure time and income level. I don't have any figures on that right now, but will do some investigation. My assumption is that leisure is not evenly distributed, and that the working poor have much less leisure time than the middle and upper classes. 

Turing's Cathedral, or Women Disappear

"She features significantly in computing historian George Dyson's book, Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, ISBN 978-0375422775."

From the Wikipedia article for Klara Dan von Neumann

Unfortunately, she features significantly mainly as von Neumann's wife, even though she also was "a pioneer computer programmer," as per the Wikipedia article. In fact, of the 35 women whose names are in the book's index, 24 are in the book as wives, including Klara. Klara is the only one who gets a full bio and a fair amount of ink. Much of the ink comes from her unfinished memoirs about her life as von Neumann's wife. She was also one of the primary programmers working on the ENIAC, and Dyson's book names her as one of the first three programmers, along with her husband, programming ENIAC. (p. 104). Her work, however, is described as "help," one of the ways that women's activities are diminished in importance (men "do", women "help"):

"'With the help of Klari von Neumann,' says Metropolis, 'plans were revised and completed and we undertook to implement them on the ENIAC...'" p. 194

Yet she obviously provided more than "help." In fact, she invented:

"'Your code was described and was impressive,' von Neumann wrote to Klari from Los Alamos, discussing whether a routine she had developed should be coded as software or hardwired into the machine. 'They claim now, however, that making one more, 'fixed,' function table is so little work, that they want to do it. It was decided that they will build one, with the order soldered in." (p. 195)

Of the other women mentioned, one is a secretary, the other the manager of the cafeteria. The saddest story is that of Bernetta Miller, the fifth licensed woman pilot in the US who was a demonstration pilot for an airplane company, volunteered for duty in WWI and was wounded, then became secretary to the directory of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In the Dyson book, she is mainly remembered for her memoranda about dining room accounting, and for being fired by Oppenheimer. (p. 91-92)

There are eight women, other than Klara, who are in the book in their professional positions. Three of them are mentioned in a single sentence as "computers," that is people (mainly women) who did the hard math by hand before the machine computers were up to the job. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer, and I highly recommend the books by Grier in the bibliography if you wish to learn of the sophistication of methods that were developed by the "girls.")

One woman, Mina Rees, is named twice as someone who was written to:

"... Goldstine had written to Mina Rees of the Office of Naval Research." p. 147

"... 'The best change for a real undersatnding of protein chemistry lies in the x-ray diffraction field,' he wrote to Mina Rees at the Office of Naval Research." p.229

Later there is a quote from a report that states,

"... was informed by Dr. Mina Rees and Colonel Oscar Maier, representing the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Material Command, respectively..." p. 321

In themselves these quotes are not important, but this is one of the few professional women who gets mentioned in the book, and this is all that is said about her. Dr. Mina Rees was an amazing character: "She earned her doctorate in 1931 with a thesis on "Division algebras associated with an equation whose group has four generators," published in the American Journal of Mathematics, Vol 54 (Jan. 1932), 51-65. Her advisor was Leonard Dickson." (Wikipedia article) At the time of these references she was head of the Mathematics Department at the Office of Naval Research.

There are some other minor mentions, like one of Meg Ryan in a parenthetical sentence about a named location that was later used in a movie, and one woman mathematician who was named with two male mathematicians in a single sentence. These obviously are not major characters in the book, and the book is wide-ranging with everything from Aldus Huxley to George Washington, also not major characters.

The real mystery woman is Hedvig Selberg.

"'... says Atle Selberg, whose wife, Hedi was hired by von Neumann on September 29, 1950, and remained with the computer project until its termination in 1958.'" p. 152

Later we get a short bio of her: born in 1919 in Transylvania, graduated with a master's degree in mathematics at the head of her class, and was the only family member to survive Auschwitz. She came to the U.S. and was hired to work on the first computer project. She seems to have worked closely with a Martin Schwarzschild on a complex model of stellar evolution that related to the radiation effects of the bomb that was being designed. Schwarzschild went on to fame, as did Selberg's husband, a mathematician. Hedvig didn't even rate an obituary in the big newspapers (nor a Wikipedia article), although she is mentioned in her husband's obit where he first marries her, then she dies (in 1995) and he remarries.

"His first wife, Hedvig Liebermann, a researcher at the institute and Princeton's Plasma Physics Laboratory, died in 1995." (NYT Aug 17, 2007)

(Note: Mina Rees did get a NY Times obit. )

Among the other striking aspects of this treatment of women (and this book isn't by any means unusual in this respect) is that women tend not to exist until they marry a man of interest, and then suddenly they appear on the scene. Men, on the other hand, have parents and educations and often interesting stories that are told in the book, both as character building but also as bone fides. It is therefore a bit of a shock to learn in some aside that the wife has a PhD in "trans-sonic aerodynamics" as in the case with Kathleen Booth. (p. 133)

Admittedly the opportunities for women in science were very limited in the period being discussed in this book, the 1950's. However, the role of a historian is to go beyond the period's view of itself and tease out a deeper meaning from the privileged position of hind-sight. I have read other histories of computing that also failed to notice that there were women involved in the invention of this field, but this one has come out in 2012. Really, we didn't need another book on the topic written with male blinders. What a shame.

Suggested reading:
Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology : the Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. 1st ed. New York: A.A. Knopf :, 1997.
Mozans, H. J. Woman in Science; with an Introductory Chapter on Woman’s Long Struggle for Things of the Mind,. New York,: D. Appleton and company, 1913.
Toole, Betty A., and Ada King Lovelace. Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers : a Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer. 1st ed. Mill Valley, Calif.: Strawberry Press ;, 1992.
Grier, David Alan. When Computers Were Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Print.

Men, Women: Different

The title of this post was a teaser headline on the cover of USA today -- no, I don't remember when, but the statement definitely struck me. Yes, we are different. Our different points of view are so deep that it's often hard to explain why something matters.

This ad for the cordless mouse clearly made it all of the way through the company's management structure without raising an eyebrow, but many women I have shown this to have had a visceral reaction, since "cut the cord" brings up thoughts of childbirth, which makes this photo of butchers pretty gruesome.

Around this same time (and I'm again talking about the mid 1990's) women began complaining about the title of the back page of PC Magazine: Abort, Retry, Fail. It was a page of bloopers and idiotic error messages. You have to be of the older generation to remember what ARF was about, since it was a DOS error code. There are some examples here in case you are either a) too young to remember, or b) wanting a nostalgia trip.

In any case, some women objected to the use of Abort, Retry, Fail for a humor page because the term abort wasn't at all humorous to them. Men didn't understand this at all. They also seemed to think that the meaning "to end a process" was the main usage of the term, and that its association with a failed pregnancy was just a minor nit, hardly worth noticing. It obviously all depends on which meaning of abort has had the greatest affect on your life. PC magazine did change the name to Backspace, and changed it back again to Abort, Retry, Fail in 2006. The magazine didn't survive much longer, but having nothing to do with its back page, I'm sure.

This last image (unless I get ambitious later and scan some more) could almost have been used as a test for "Are you a man or a woman?" Chameleon was software for managing your Internet connection, and darned good software at that. We used it in my place of work for years. If you see a man on a motorcycle and nothing else, you just might be a man. If you see some high heels flying in the air and get an image of a woman having just been dumped on the road, you're either a woman or would make a great boyfriend. In my talks and writing I called this image: Woman as roadkill on the information highway.

It always amazes me how separate the realities can be for men and women, although there's a chance they are no more distant that those of rich and poor, abled and disabled, or any other human dichotomy you can come up with. I can say that having experienced the world of computing for nearly forty years as a woman, these differences in perception have a real effect on getting along and getting things done. One of my favorite statements is from Professor Ellen Spertus who teaches and encourages women in computer science, and who says: "You can be both rigorous and nurturing." My translation of this is: women's views count, too.

Throbnet, 1995

One of the characteristics of PC Magazine in the mid-1990's was its adult classified section. This went on for many pages; many, many offensive pages. Remember, this was a magazine that many of us read in our professional capacity, since it was the main way to get information about new products and trends. PC Magazine was the primary source of hardware and software reviews; their special printer issue was the place to go before buying a printer. But unfortunately, it also came with these pages.

This is a fairly mild example. I don't remember my rationale but I probably didn't feel comfortable showing the raunchier ads to my audiences, so I used this one. There were more explicit examples like the ads for Throbnet (a name that is still used in online porn).

But the real clincher for me was when I went to my first computer show. My memory has it that it was a MacWorld, but I can't be sure of that. It was in San Francisco, around 1995. Included among the exhibitors were some of the porn vendors who advertised in these pages. Their draw was that they had the actresses there in the booth. I distinctly remember the line of guys waiting to have their copy of "Anal ROM" signed. It was a very uncomfortable place for a woman working in the computer field.

No hairstyling tips, 1995

(The next few posts will be feminist in nature. If that type of thing annoys you, I suggest you skip them, and I'll be back to librarianship in a trice.)

There is a new generation of women dealing with the nature of computing culture. Fortunately, they have social media to help them cope. (Example1, Example2) Reading their posts reminded me that in the mid-90's I did talks about the portrayal of women in computer magazines, and that I might have some illustrations that were still usable. I have only a few since most of my examples ended up as black and white transparencies that aren't scan-able. But in the next few posts I'll offer what I do have, all from about 1995.

The above image is of a postcard that I received in the mid-nineties from a bulletin board system (BBS) called "BIX". BBSs were the only way to get online in those days, although by the mid-nineties most gave you a pass-through to the Internet. A BBS was a kind of mini-AOL: an online gathering and posting place that was a walled community. The first BBS I joined was CompuServe, since that was the main place for technical information about PC hardware and software. (Note: there was a little or no product information on the Internet, which in the 1980's and early 90's was strictly limited to academic activities and research.)

I must have gotten the BIX card because I subscribed to PC Magazine. The message, however, was far from inviting. Here's the back of the card:



The main text says:

No garbage.
No noise.
No irrelevant clutter.

Which, as the card illustrates, obviously meant: no girls.

I have more examples of this "boy's club" atmosphere in 1996 in my article in Wired Women: How hard can it be? (Available on my site.)

Girls are still icky

In 1996 I wrote a piece that was published in a book called Wired Women about the gender gap in computer advertising. (Online version) At the time, the computer world was so awash in testosterone that the back pages of computer user magazines, like PC Magazine, were mainly adds for pornography. The message for women was clear: No Girls Allowed. Like this postcard ad for a mid-1990's bulletin board system, which said on the back:

No wasted time.
No garbage.
No noise.
No irrelevant clutter.
For serious computer programmers and developers, BIX is the exclusive online club.

And one could add: no girls allowed.

I thought all of that was in the past, but ... nooooooooo. This Verizon Droid ad is just an updated version of that 1996 BBS advertisement.


Not only should the phone not be pretty (so maybe Ugly Betty would be acceptable), but it is not a "tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen" and, as the women puts on her lipstick in the street, "it's not a princess, it's a robot." I don't want to go so far as to assume that the attack on the fashion-plate male manikins equals homophobia, but the ending salvo of "It trades hair-do for can-do" is eerily reminiscent of the image above.

Girls and the Internet

Today's New York Times has an article about the dominance of young females on the Internet. According to the article, 35% of girls (age 12-17) blog, compared to 20% of boys. And 32% of girls create or work on their own Web pages, compared to 22% of boys. They also greatly outnumber boys in having social networking sites. The article gives examples of girls who create and advise on CSS code creation and who design icons and animated icons. Some of these young women are making money (at least some money, no figures are given) from their sites.

So where was this article placed in the paper? In the business section with other "Internet entrepreneurs"? In the technology section? No, it was in Fashion & Style, right under an article on wedding dresses.

*sigh*

Being Careful

The Library of Congress has put some great collections of photos up on Flickr. Take a look at the group on the 1930's and 40's. There are some great photos of "Rosie the Riveter" women building various implements of war, especially aircraft. (Note: the photos do look staged, or at least they gave the women a chance to freshen their lipstick before the shoot.)

Type the word "careful" into the search box at the top and you'll get an idea of that era's nervousness about having women work on technology, and the qualities that women were seen as bringing to the job. (Hint: it's not innate mechanical ability.) These women really did show that "we can do it." Training, schmaining -- just give me a power tool and turn me loose!