This is the hands-on computer exhibit at the Exploratorium, a science museum here in San
Francisco. And one of the most interesting things about this exhibit is the kids who
come here, because there are as many girls as there are boys. The stereotype is that
computers are mainly for boys and men. But today we're going to take a look at women
in computing on this edition of the Computer Chronicles.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by grants from AFIPS, the American Federation
of Information Processing Societies, a non-profit federation of 11 national societies for computer
professionals. AFIPS, leadership and service in computer and information technology. Additional
funding is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte. Byte's detailed technical articles
on new hardware, software, and languages cover the latest in microcomputer technology worldwide.
Byte, the international standard.
Welcome to the Computer Chronicles. I'm Stuart Shafae and this is Gary Kildall. Gary, we
have up on the computer here an adventure game called Cave Girl Claire that features
a young girl as the main figure in the adventure game. And that reminds us right away that
in fact most adventure games, most computer games are aimed at men. Now a lot of people
thought computers and high tech would be an equalizer among the sexes, but yet most computer
engineers, programmers, scientists are in fact men. What is your theory as to why there
is this gender gap in computers?
Well our industry is really based in general engineering which is a male dominated field.
But our industry also thrives on talent and innovation and not on artificial biases and
barriers. What's the reality of the situation? I don't know what it is exactly. I do know
in my personal experience my son is a computer nut and my daughter loves horses. Now I love
both of those directions but I can't tell you what I did to influence that. Maybe our
experts can.
I think so. We're going to meet the woman who created this particular piece of software
for women. We'll meet several of the top women in the computing field to find out why there
are so few women in computers. Now their numbers may be few but there are some precocious young
women out there in computers and we're going to begin with a profile of a young female
computer whiz.
Computers in the classroom are no longer scarce, often introduced to both boys and girls as
early as the first grade. But while the sexes are about evenly divided in this elementary
school class, the ratio changes in later years. A recent study indicates that first grade
girls are just as likely to use computers as boys. But by the sixth grade, boys outnumber
girls by two to one. By the time they leave junior high school, boys make up 80 percent
of the group learning to program computers. Educators cite different reasons for the discrepancy
from intimidation and parental pressure to educational software's male-oriented games.
But while it may be a simple job to count heads in a classroom, it is harder to keep
track of the computer's influence outside of school.
Corrie Grimm is 16 years old. She's also a graphic artist working at her mother's software
company. Since the age of 10, she's used a joystick, a mouse, and an electronic palette
to give form to her ideas. To Corrie, the computer is not intimidating or alien, but
the most natural resource to produce her artwork. She talks about progressing from low to high
resolution screens like a promotion to the next grade. Unlike many artists who only reluctantly
traded the tactile sense of a paintbrush for a light pen, Corrie began her graphic arts
career using the computer as her primary tool. She also has three computers at home, programs
in BASIC, and does her homework on a Macintosh. With the help of teacher workshops, female
enrollment in computer classes has expanded recently, and hoping to find a new market,
some software vendors continue to develop programs specifically designed for women.
But Corrie Grimm learned naturally to assimilate computers into her life without worrying about
either one.
Joining us now is a mother and daughter team of computer scientists. First of all, Thelma
Estrin, a professor of computer science at UCLA, and next to her, her daughter, Judy
Estrin, the executive vice president at a company she helped found, Bridge Communications,
a company involved in local area network technology. Gary?
Thelma, you're considered successful by any measure in computer science and engineering,
and your daughter is certainly very successful with following in your footsteps with advanced
degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, a new company that she's formed,
a very successful company. How did you manage to get into a field such as engineering at
the time that you did?
Well, you may remember during the Second World War about Rosie the Riveter, the women who
went into war industries. Well, I had the opportunity to work in an engineering lab
and replacing the men who were going to fight. And after that, I decided to go back to school
and major in engineering. And it was at a time when I just went right through and got
a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.
You're considered pretty rare at that time?
Pretty rare. I was married at that time to my husband, who also has a Ph.D. in computer
engineering, and most of the people thought I was in school either to do his homework
or he was having me in school to keep me out of mischief. But nevertheless, we both went
on to careers, and he had the opportunity to go and work at the Institute for Advanced
Study with John von Neumann, and I worked there for the summer and then went into another
career, biomedical engineering, but then subsequently came back to computer engineering.
Have you seen attitudes shift at all during that time?
Yes, tremendously. In the sense that then I was very rare. Somebody would say, what
do you do? And I'd say, an electrical engineer. And they'd always say, well, you don't look
like an electrical engineer. Well, I don't think you find a woman who says she's a computer
scientist today, anybody saying, well, you don't look like a computer scientist. So from
that point of view, I think.
Judy, one thing that people talk about is the role model. What effect do you think your
mother had in terms of your career?
I believe very strongly in the impact of role models, and it's one of the reasons why more
and more women are going into computers and engineering, because those role models exist.
And I think one of the main differences and the things that have helped me be successful
has had to do with how I approach my entry into the industry and my moving along in that
industry. I never questioned whether or not I should move into a man's profession. I watched
my mother do it, and it was a question of, why shouldn't I? And let's see anybody stop
me, as opposed to going out there cautiously. I might add also, though, is when I said that
I'm an executive VP of research and development, I still get people who tell me I don't look
like an executive VP of research and development.
So maybe not that much has changed.
So it has changed. But if I said I was an electrical engineer, they wouldn't question
it. But it is still at the higher levels of management, I think, that the attitudes have
changed.
Judy, we had your mother's perspective on the things that have changed in one generation's
worth. I was wondering what your perspective is on what it's like now compared to what
you saw your mother going through when she got into this field.
I think you really have to separate out the individual contributor and the first-level
managers from upper-level management. And at the engineer level, it has changed dramatically.
When I entered the workforce in an industry with young men, and so those younger men were
very accepting of me. And I'm very happy to say I have had very few obstacles going through
my career. It's the reason I've been able to do what I have so quickly.
And I think that there have been dramatic changes. At the higher levels, someone earlier
was mentioning that the women at the top have tended to be at the top of companies they
have founded. So I do believe that there are still obstacles there, and mainly attitudes
of people in terms of upper-level management.
Is that an attitude about business in general, or is it the computer industry and engineering?
I think it's business in general. I still think that the computer industry is a lot
more advanced in their attitudes than other industries. And it's because it is a young
industry driven by younger people who have grown up in a world in which it's more acceptable.
But it has not disappeared. And there still are, again, when I introduce myself, people
look at me. And it takes a couple minutes for them to believe that it's really true.
Thelma, you teach computer science at UCLA, and I'd be interested in what you see and
the differences in your male and female students, if any.
Well, I really teach at the graduate level. And well, talking about UCLA, there's one
overwhelming difference that you see that transcends male-female, which is the large
portion of Asian-Americans that are in the school. And interestingly enough, among that
new community, you see almost as many women in engineering and in computer science as
you do, this is both graduate and undergraduate, as you do, well, as many women as you see
men.
More so than among the American students.
Yes, more so than among the American students. And among the American graduate students,
you still see a smaller percentage. You see about 15, 10 to 15 percent women, while at
undergraduate level, it's about 20 percent women.
Okay, Thelma and Judy, thank you. Now, in just a minute, we're going to meet a woman
who creates software for women, and we'll meet a woman who heads up a woman's computer
project at UC Berkeley. So stay with us.
Joining us now is Elizabeth Stott, co-founder of Rhiannon Software, creators of software
for girls. And next to Elizabeth is Kay Gilliland, director of the Equals in Computer Technology
program at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley.
Elizabeth, Judy was telling us when she grew up in her home, she felt like it was okay
to work with computers. Now, do you feel like the software that's out there for the home
right now makes a young girl feel like it's not okay to work with computers?
Most of it does. The artwork, the content, the way that the games are played, they all
say, hey, this is a boy thing. The advertising, the whole industry has said this is pretty
much a male machine. I agreed with what Judy said, it's like cars were in the 1920s, you
know, a woman wasn't caught dead driving a car then. So we have this tremendous psychological
barrier to overcome with girls. And when you talk about role models, that's one of the
big way that we've addressed it is by very appealing, realistic, spunky, fun, energetic
kind of girl characters that are having these neat adventures. That will appeal to girls.
They'll say, hey, I'd like to do that. It's not like being a robot or something like that.
As long as that's acceptable among the peer group, then it's okay. What sort of things
have you done with your software that really is, say, oriented toward, well, not necessarily,
say, little boy oriented? Well, they're oriented toward girls in several ways. The characters
is one way. The style of the graphics is another way. Our graphics draw at a rate that the
eye can follow, which is very appealing. We tend to find that people lean into the computer
when they first see our graphics rather than leaning away from the computer like they typically
do with other software. Can you show us an example? Sure. Yeah. We had such a good response
from our adventure stories for 7 to 12 year olds that we designed something for 4 to 8
year olds which does not involve reading. So with this program, Kristen and Sarah are
two new little friends that are for a pre-reader group. And they have a different sort of adventures
where you use three keys on the computer, but you don't have to type or you don't have
to read. Now, this is the menu that Sarah would have. It shows a bunch of different
activities that she could choose. She can put pictures in top, middle, bottom order.
She can choose. In this one, you have weather conditions and they can choose clothes to
wear certain days. You can tell nature stories. You can figure out what goes on a calendar.
And you can put little stories in first, middle, last order. Now, this all goes along with
the elementary school curriculum and the things that are being taught there. Now, here's some
of the appeal of the graphics. You know, kids love that and they identify with riding bikes
at this age, of course. So Sarah and her friends are always zooming around on bikes. So the
idea basically is that the child really gets into this quote game. The computer is just
kind of an artifact that's there. And then, oh, by the way, it's okay to work with computers
because there's a way that you can play the game.
They identify with what's going on. They make it real. They take it into their own real
life. We've built these games around children. We haven't said, let's match children to the
computers. We're saying, let's make a computer game that's going to match the interests of
the children. So the animations are cute and the clothes. For example, if a kid wants to
choose a bathing suit to wear in the snow, they can and they do and they giggle a lot.
Grownups might think that the right answer is the mittens and the boots, but kids like
to try different things. So we encourage them to experiment and have a lot of fun and just
find out what the computer can do.
Do you ever have boys playing with the software?
You know, the extraordinary thing is that you have this girl picture on the cover. You
say it's for girls and boys will say, aha, a new computer game. Let me try it because
it is such a male identified machine. Whereas girls will say, oh, I didn't know they had
anything for girls. And then they'll try it. And then what happens is that after they've
used our software, they'll go on to other kinds of software. And that's really the point,
to crash the barrier so they can go on to other kinds of things.
Kay, what is your feeling about this, introducing, let's say, computers into this?
Well, I think it's very important that we use whatever entry point that we have in order
to make sure that girls have this experience. And many of the things that Rhiannon has done
are used in the home. And this helps tremendously. However, it's also true that in the schools,
something must be done. Many parents really don't have the same feelings of awareness
of this. So that one of the interesting things that happened at the Lawrence Hall of Science
recently, we were watching a little group of youngsters, preschoolers, using computers.
They were all boys, 12 of them. And a mother was standing there watching the kids. And
I said, do you have a son in that class? Oh, yes, he's that one over there. And I said,
does he like it? Oh, yes, he likes it. Of course, he might rather be out playing. But
yes, he likes it. I said, do you have a daughter? Yes, she's older. And is she interested in
computers too? Oh, we never thought about it for her. And this is an intelligent, ordinarily
aware person. But our whole society says to us, computers are for boys.
And so it's up to our educational system to make sure that we introduce the things in
a way that does not have an orientation toward one child or the other.
Okay, now your program is called Equals at the Lawrence Hall of Science. And I saw some
startling numbers. I think you call them startling statistics, which shows why equals is probably
a good word. I think 7% of home computer users are women. 5% of the subscribers to Byte are
women. 2% of PC buyers are women. Why do you think that is?
I'm not sure that I can explain all the various reasons why that is. I mean, our culture says
it to girls when they're very young. You open the magazines and you find pictures of men.
You open that manual for the Macintosh and every entry picture is of a male. And so there
are many, many reasons why. But I think what we have to accept is we need to do something
about it. If awareness is a very important thing, then parents need to be aware, teachers
need to be aware. And in designing the program, actually, Equals, directed by Nancy Kreinberg,
started in 1977 as a teacher education program in mathematics. And it has developed in a
number of ways, family math, equals in computer technology.
Okay, what kind of software do you use in your Equals program?
I brought along Gertrude's Secrets, which is from the Learning Company and is used widely
by teachers who are aware of the need for software that is bias-free, that is interesting
to girls as well as to boys. And those are some of the things we look for.
How does Gertrude's Secrets really accomplish that?
Well, a lack of violence. I think that's something that girls have done for us in a way. Many
girls do not want the violent games, the war games and so forth. And so we as teachers
have the opportunity to say, hey, I'm not going to have that in my classroom. And so
the ideas that are presented are things that both girls and boys enjoy. And the learning
outcomes are important for both, particularly important for girls, because attribute games
such as this, spatial relationships, have been an area where girls have had particularly
difficulty. And apparently they have very different experiences as little kids. And
so if girls are school-dependent for this learning, it's important for us to have it.
Okay, there is another project aimed at training women in computers, and it's called the Women's
Computer Literacy Project in San Francisco. And Wendy Woods has a report on that.
All these women have one thing in common. They know nothing about computers. They're
at the Women's Computer Literacy Project in San Francisco, an intensive two-day school
for women only in which Deborah Brecker teaches the basics in a unique and controversial way.
Deborah Brecker has written the Women's Computer Literacy Handbook in which she contends that
women learn differently from men. Men, she says, can memorize a set of instructions and
then follow them. But women, she says, require an understanding of the concepts and the machines
before they can fool around with them.
I've been looking in research actually to see, you know, is that true? Am I the only
person that notices these things? And what I saw is in game theory, what they point out
is that boys learn rule games really young, right? Girls are doing process games. They're
playing dolls. They're not rules, right? And so I think that that patterning, that early
childhood patterning, leads into gender differences about how styles of learning.
So what the women get are analogies. Brecker compares a buffer to a filling bathtub, RAM
memory to mailboxes.
Because the class is all women, there's a certain common background that I can assume.
Everybody knows how to cook, right? They may not, you know, enjoy cooking or be gourmet
cooks, but they all understand what a recipe is. They understand what ingredients are.
So if they understand what ingredients are, then they know what data is because the data
is the ingredients for a computer recipe.
3,500 women ranging in age from their teens to their seventies have gone through this
course, which is the only one of its kind in the country.
The proof that Brecker's teaching method works is in hundreds of letters that she gets from
students. Many of them say, I learned all I needed to know, which is the highest compliment.
For the Computer Chronicles, I'm Wendy Woods.
Yeah, Stuart, maybe Bite magazine ought to run those classes to get that 5% on up their
way.
That's a good idea. Gary, we have two people joining us now, and I'd like to introduce
Adele Goldberg, who is the manager of the System Concepts Lab at Xerox PARC. Adele is
also president of ACM, the Technical and Scientific Computer Society.
And next to Adele is Jan Lewis, formerly with Microsoft and Infocorp, among others, and
now president of the Palo Alto Research Group.
Adele, well, there's actually a question for both of you. I'll start with Adele. In your
roles in the computer industry and in the research work you've done, you have to predict
sort of what's happening, where the markets are going to be, things of that sort.
Do you see a market, a software market, say, for women specifically, or is that just so
general? A word process is a word process, a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet?
Well, two answers to your question. First, I don't spend my time predicting the markets
as much as predicting the future and trying to come up with innovative new ideas that
will change the marketplace.
Secondly, I don't distinguish between men and women. I think they're people, and I think
the previous segment discussing the computer examples, you kept talking about the child
and exciting the child. I'm out to excite children and adults in the software that we
present.
Now, Jan, what was your experience? I mean, you've come a long way as a woman in this
business. I mean, did you have hurdles? Did you have problems? What was the experience
you had?
You know, the interesting thing is there probably were hurdles and problems. I don't think I
realized it until probably about five years ago. When I got out of college, the first
thing I wanted to do was be a programmer because that was a good field for women, and I never
thought of it in terms of discrimination. In 1974, I went into sales for informatics.
I was one, I was the first female of a hundred-person sales force, and I really was in a fishbowl.
At this point, a typical high-tech sales force will be about 50-50. At that point, I still
hadn't thought in terms of discrimination. As you start getting toward the top, you start
realizing that you really have more opportunities if you go off and you start your own company
and you start your own thing. At least this is what I realized, and you don't...
It seems to be a sort of recurring theme that the upper levels of the management of the
company are difficult to penetrate, then.
I think there are exceptions, but if you look at the examples that are out there, by and
large the really upper levels have, in fact, started their own companies. This is really
the direction I've gone in, and at this point I feel no problems whatsoever with anybody
I deal with in terms of suppliers, in terms of clients, in terms of employees or prospective
employees. I think what I've really done, the tack I've taken, is I have just simply
ignored what may or may not have been the obstacles and gone for being the best in anything
I do and going in that direction.
Adele, is there some concern that girls, young girls, who don't get familiar with computers
and so on, will be at some disadvantage when they get to be adults and get into the professional
world? I mean, it might not have mattered whether you played with model airplanes, but
it may matter if you didn't play with computers.
I think that is true of not just girls, but boys as well now. It's like never having a
pencil and paper in your hand and expecting to get a job when you're an adult. It's becoming
more and more imperative to at least have an understanding of what computers are about
and how you can use them. One of the things that have been talked about here today has
been the importance of role models. I want to emphasize the importance of also having
some jobs related to what you're interested in and getting some experience. I don't think
we would hire any longer anyone who hasn't had some computing experience and done some
real work in the computing field, even though they just graduated from school. You expect
them to know and have experience using the tool, if not doing the science about the tool.
Suppose you are a young girl, like we talked about Gary's daughter before. You just say,
I don't like computers. I'd rather have horses or paint or something. Is that a concern of
a parent because of what you say?
There are days when I don't like computers and I'd rather have horses than paint. I don't
think it should be a concern. I think that different people are going to be interested
in different things. I have two daughters. I do not have computers in the house for them
to play with. Right now I have pianos and art supplies and other people. I just assume
that as they grow up, they develop their particular interests. I do expect them in school to have
some computer experience and I will give them some as well so they understand.
Do you see a positive trend here? Are we working in the right direction now? That more and
more women are being involved in computer technology or not?
Both in the early levels. I think there is a natural inquisitiveness on the part of children
and as long as nothing stands in their way. In other words, as long as a computer is there
for them to play with and nobody thinks it's something verboten for them, I think it goes
in that direction. I think also in terms of business nowadays. I disagree, by the way,
with that 2% of purchasers. I see women, the surveys I've done in the Fortune 2000, the
number of women who are doing the purchasing is increasing dramatically at this point.
So I see a great move in the direction of women as well as men simply using computers.
I'm sorry, we're out of time. Thank you so much. We just have enough time to go to our
commentator Paul Schindler for his closing thoughts.
As the father of two girls, ages 5 and 1, the subject of this show has special meaning
to me. In my other job as Senior West Coast Editor of Information Week, I wrote a cover
story on women in computing. And frankly, it makes me as mad as hell to see how badly
women are underused in the computer business. I think it should make you mad too, whether
you're a man or a woman. Let me tell you why. If you're a woman, you should be mad because
the accident of your birth put you at a permanent disadvantage in the computer business. Sure,
your disadvantage in this field is less than in other fields, but so what? It's still a
disadvantage. If you're a man, you should be mad because you're watching a terrible
waste of human resources. I hope no one still argues in this day and age that women aren't
as smart as men. If they are as smart, they should be half the DP workforce, but they're
not. That means on the face of it that millions of women who could be the best people in computing
are doing something else. That's a shame. Now, I'm not saying hire women because they're
women. I'm saying hire the best person for the job, regardless of sex. That's my opinion.
I'm Paul Schindler.
I'm Susan Chase, sitting in for Stuart Shafae. In the random access file this week, Franklin
Computer Corporation unveiled the first personal computer not made by Apple to be compatible
with Apple software. Franklin filed for reorganization under federal bankruptcy laws last year after
a lengthy legal battle with Apple over previous alleged copyright infringement. The new Ace
2000 will come in three models, all priced under $1,000, about $600 less than Apple's
2C and 2E models. Franklin says shipments will begin this week. Apple Computer continues
to improve its own products. Apple will offer a memory upgrade for its 2E that will expand
its memory to almost twice that of the IBM PC. Other improvements to be announced this
month include a higher capacity floppy disk drive, a color monitor, and software that
makes the machine more like the Macintosh. AT&T and Atari are reportedly negotiating
an arrangement for Atari to sell some of its ST computers through AT&T. Such an agreement
would give Atari a major customer for its new computer, while giving AT&T a low-cost
entry into the personal computer market. Officially, both companies declined to confirm the negotiations.
Get ready to put away your Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program. A new program called Javelin goes
beyond the current spreadsheet columns and rows by giving users the ability to look at
data in almost a dozen different forms. Javelin allows users to see where data came from,
the logic that determined the formula used, and which pieces of data are affected when
any variable is altered. The program is designed for IBM PCs with at least 512K of memory and
will sell for about $700. And now for more software news, here's Paul Schindler with
his review.
You know, getting organized must be difficult for all of us, judging from the number of
software packages that promise to help. MaxiThink, for example, or Think Tank. But every time
a need becomes clear, someone comes along and builds a better mousetrap, or in this
case, a better thought trap. They call DaVinci a renaissance in thinking. They may be right.
DaVinci is faster, cheaper, and more flexible than any other outline program on the market.
It uses color well and includes both a calculator and a calendar. Your outline can contain up
to five levels, each of which can contain 99 topics, although there's an overall limit
of 255 headings. Each heading can be as long as 60 characters. Each can have 50 lines of
text associated with it. This text can then be exported into your word processor. If you
change your mind about the order of subjects, reorder them. If you decide to make subtopics
into topics and vice versa, you can do that too. This thin book tells you all you need
to know about how to run the program. That's how simple it is. DaVinci from Applied Microsystems,
Rosewell, Georgia, costs $60 and offers the best outlining help on the market. It's not
copy protected. For the Computer Chronicles, I'm Paul Schindler.
That's it for this week's Computer Chronicles. See you next time.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by grants from AFIPS, the American Federation
of Information Processing Societies, a non-profit federation of 11 national societies for computer
professionals. AFIPS, leadership and service in computer and information technology. Additional
funding is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte. Byte's detailed technical articles
on new hardware, software, and languages cover the latest in microcomputer technology worldwide.
Byte, the international standard.