Crosspost: https://lemmy.ml/post/37870
First semester of my cs degree, it was around 50/50. After 3 semesters very few women were left. Spoiler: it was not because they could not handle the courses.
It was another time, but the first field my mother went into was IT. She dropped her punch cards on her way to the computer and had to explain to the teacher that she would need time to put them back in order. His reaction?
“Women have no business in my class, go do the nursing program instead.”
The takeover of a what was once a female-dominated sector was in full swing at that point. A damn shame. Did she stick it out?
I had a shitty old (late 60s) boss in 2008 who once interviewed a female engineer straight out of college.
Most interviews he gave took like 25-30 minutes. He spent an hour and a half alone in the conference room with this young woman.
After she left he said something to the team like “Sure wouldn’t mind seeing her around the office every day eh? We’re not hiring her of course. Women don’t have the head for this work.”
This same guy had me block all news sites except Fox News (I was the IT director). He was fine with his employees reading the news as long as it was Fox (I ended up teaching a couple of my coworkers how to use proxies).
I was one of three women in my year who graduated in CS at my university. I did most of my course work at home…trying to be one of the guys and make sure kindness wouldn’t be considered flirting made for a weird 4 years. No horror stories to tell though , just plenty of awkwardness.
