Women In Technology — Then and Now

Diverse teams are nothing new, but some of the benefits have been lost.

People are often surprised when I don’t get too excited by the debates over women in technology. Yes I am angered with the gender pay gaps and the bias in recruitment that is out there. But for me WIT isn’t anything extraordinary.

Recently though I have realised that this is because I have been very fortunate to have had very different experiences to many working in IT. My older sister was an IT Project Manager and many of my managers have been women.

But moreover, before I had heard of Tim Berners Lee or Bill Gates I knew of my father’s cousin Anne. She was a software developer in the 1960s and she lay the path for my career in technology.

In this blog I talk with Anne about her career in IT and what we can learn from it for today’s IT teams.

How did you end up in computing?

When I was at school I was taking Maths and Physics A-Levels in 1958 and I was deciding whether to go to University or not. My parents couldn’t afford it and my female maths teacher suggested I go into computing. I didn’t know what it was, but I started to look around.

My first job was designing lenses, not with computers, but that only lasted a few months as I didn’t enjoy it. After that I went to work for de Havilland Propellers on the Blue Streak missile project. I was writing code to control the rockets. We used to have to go to the cinema to watch films of the missile launches to see how they went.

After the project was cancelled I went to work for the Central Electricity Generating Board. There we were using IBM mainframes to control nuclear power stations.

What was your role?

I started as a Computer Operator on shift work, working with paper tape and then punch cards. People did make mistakes, but we always did a lot of checks. Mistakes led to improvements.

I then moved on to be a Systems Programmer looking after the operating system. Once, we were getting a new mainframe so I drew myself up a network diagram and then I went on holiday whilst it was installed. When I came back I was suddenly the expert on it!

I thoroughly enjoyed my work, as I got older I realised how lucky was.

Did you ever think that your area of work would one day spawn whole new industries and people doing similar jobs all over the world?

It was more of a case of every two years we would get a new mainframe or software and we accepted the change and kept moving on. The industry was growing around you.

At the end of 60s and early 70s some of our team started writing the first network software. It was a way to replace data being telephoned or faxed in and then being punched on cards. There were fewer mistakes.

I went to Bletchley [Park] recently and recognised some of the computers that we had been using. We didn’t know they were the same technology at the time because of the official secrets act. It took 50 years for that information and how it fitted into the history of computing to come out.

How would you describe the culture in your team?

We all just worked hard and played hard, there were no rules; we made the rules and all worked together. Everything was just interesting. There was a real scientific approach and focus to how we worked.

It was completely different to the commercial world. We had equal pay and everyone was just as likely to be promoted. We had a completely mixed team with people from all over, like Australia. We all still keep in contact now.

How did you balance home and work life?

It was shift work, the nights were the longest shift to fit in with public transport. So I would be going home as the pubs were clearing out. As a woman going alone I had to protect myself, cross the street to avoid any trouble.

What lessons would you pass on to those working in computing today?

Have an open mind and learn something new every time. Thing are always changing.

Programmers are still making the same mistakes by not talking to users. They think their idea is a good idea. That’s always happened. I talk to shop staff about the tills they use and they are always frustrated by where the buttons are and how slow they are. Software is being decided by head offices and not shop workers.