Programming Inequality. How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost its Edge in Computing. by Marie Hicks. (2018) MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, pp 352. £14.99. 2018‐05‐11 ISBN 9780262535182

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12121
• Author: Helen Richardson
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018

New Technology, Work and Employment 33:3

ISSN 0268-1072

Book Review

Programming Inequality. How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost its

Edge in Computing.

Marie Hicks. (2018) MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, pp 352.

£14.99. 2018-05-11 ISBN 9780262535182

The goings- on at Bletchley Park during World War 2 were subject to extreme

secrecy. Then from the 1970s, government documents began to be released showing

the extent of advanced code breaking and computing taking place, involving

skilled programming and hardware maintenance. The experienced workers were

mainly female but the post- war story of computing development in Britain belies

this history. Marie Hicks meticulously delves into UK archives and notes how

women were devalued, excluded and discriminated against post- war, suggesting

that this had a detrimental effect on the British economy which persists today:

‘In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing, but by 1974 the British

Computing Industry was all but extinct’.

From punched tapes to the Colossus computer containing over 1,000 vacuum tubes

and utilising switches, plug boards, different wheel settings and so on, the emerging

computing industry post- war was dominated by women machine operators. The skills

and expertise were required for GCHQ—Government Communications Headquarters—

that has provided signals and intelligence information in the UK since 1919. Post- war,

women were not replaced by men since the roles of machine operating were clearly

regarded as ‘women’s work’. Women also continued to provide technical expertise

for many government functions run by the Civil Service, such as, surveying and

drafting within the Ordnance Survey Department.

Electronic computing seemed to promise the potential to restore Britain to its

former ‘glory’ of empire culminating in the ‘white heat of technological revolution’

speech by Prime Minister Wilson in the 1960s. The possibility of a transformed

society lay in the view that technology would sweep away old social hierarchies,

divisions and outdated practices and meritocracy would win the day allowing

those with the skills and knowledge to benefit regardless of class and status. Yet

Hicks shows how this top- down government initiative to computerise was predicated

on heteronormativity that shaped working lives with sexist labour patterns of

binary gender, heterosexuality and the equation of womanhood with marriage

and motherhood. As a result, women’s technical skills were downgraded and

devalued with as Hicks says a ‘systematic squandering of the vast majority of

its own technologically minded labour force’. This was coupled with measures

to suppress women’s wages and pay a so- called ‘family wage’ rather than the

‘rate for the job’. The emerging computing sector—largely based on technology

for business uses, such as, payroll and inventory—shifted reliance on skilled and

talented female programmers and hardware technicians to young men. This was

particularly to fulfil new management roles.

Post- war austerity was also addressed by the Treasury which came up with a

‘win- win’ strategy—utilise the labour power of low- paid women workers and

automate. Structural reorganisation within the Civil Service included the creation

of a new job category for operators effectively creating a ‘feminised underclass

of women machine workers’. This had significance in the decades following the

war which also saw a struggle for Equal Pay.

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

268 New Technology, Work and Employment