Re: Diversity should be a consequence, not a goal.
At the start it was regarded as drudge-work and was closely related to other jobs where women were strongly represented such as bookkeeping, accounting machine operator, data entry clerk. My mother had been an accounting machine operator and toyed with moving into computing before deciding to become an accountant in the '70s.
It was like in "Hidden Figures" - computing was regarded as an unimaginative clerical task until, all of a sudden, it became an exciting new area of research! But most of the new programming jobs went to men, leaving many women doing data entry punching cards or stacking cards and changing tapes as operators.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
