Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, was interviewed on PBS today. She has been in the news recently as she is trying to publicize her book, "Lean In", which, I gather, is about the role of women in the 21st century. I was struck by her comments that few women are in high tech and very few are in leadership positions. She attributed it partly to the notion that women are not good at math. I found her comments ironic. Let me tell you why.
Back in the pre-historic high tech days of the 20th century, there were many women in the world of the computer, given the different role of women then. Admiral Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace come immediately to mind. By and large I felt that women were better programmers. A math background was not necessary in those days; skills in logic and attention to detail were. I even had a couple of women bosses and they were as good or bad as my male bosses.
But, at some point (maybe the late 1980s), the women just seemed to vanish from the programming world. I have never been able to figure out why. The pay was good, the job was interesting, there was no heavy lifting involved. Yet, they did leave the field. Why?
No comments:
Post a Comment