IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018 - 11

husbands should be able to financially support them. A workforce
culture built on these assumptions
meant that women's pay was kept
low and opportunities for promotion
or positions in management were all
but non-existent.
World War II dramatically challenged the artificial rules about the
suitability of women in the workplace. With vast sectors of male
workers siphoned off to the military
by the draft, countries like Britain had
no choice but to open the doors of
the workplace to women. Hicks notes
that by 1942, Britain was relying so
heavily on women in the workforce
that it was forced to open up all jobs
to women, including the heretofore
male bastions of engineering and
welding. While employers surprisingly found women perfectly capable
of doing such work, they still treated
only the most talented women equal
to their average male counterpart.
Yet industries in the U.K. went so
far as to reorganize how work was
done and how training took place, in
order to make it easier for women to
participate. After all, as Hicks points
out, 1.1 million women (80% of single women 41% of wives and widows, 13% of mothers with children
under 14) were hired in 1942 in the
British armed forces and munitions
industries alone. The numbers only
increased as the war dragged on.
Over 10 000 women worked at the
famous Bletchley Park, mostly young,
single, white, and middle class. These
women worked on decoding German
communications, much of it using
British Colossus computers. The Colossus preceded the creation of the
U.S. ENIAC computer at the University
of Pennsylvania, which means Britain
led the world in the development of
the modern computer. Despite the
centrality of their work to the war
efforts, women at Bletchley Park
were not promoted into positions
that reflected their newfound skills,
june 2018

the type of work they performed, or
ers engaged. Consequently, the Civil
their future potential. Even severe
Service system in Britain was, for
wartime manpower shortages were
decades, among the worst perpetunot enough to completely override
ators of the unequal categorization
the gendered work culture in the U.K.
of men's and women's computUnderage and inexperienced teening work. Campaigns for equal pay
age boys, for example, were recruited
and other opportunities for women
and trained to be maintenance engiarose time and again in postwar
neers for the computers at Bletchley,
Britain, yet the country repeatedly
bypassing the older, experienced
managed to dodge any real change.
women. Indeed, the overarching mesBetween the end of WWII and 1946,
sage of Hicks' book is the length
married women were prohibited outto which Britain went to maintain its
right from working in Civil Service
gendered work rules and culture,
jobs (due to the so-called "marriage
no matter how damaging
the consequences. Hicks
illustrates how these same
gendered rules were one of
the key sources of the counA quota system was implemented
try's computing workforce
woes in the latter half of the
to keep women out of fields like
20th century.
mathematics and science.
The complete secrecy -
long after hostilities end ed - of wartime activities
at Bletchley Park and similar instalbar"), even though other industries
lations in both Britain and the U.S.
began to relax such rules since they
meant that the accomplishments
had been ignored during the WWII.
and skills of women in the warThe 1946 Equal Pay Report removed
time computing effort were never
the marriage bar, yet still assumed
acknowledged or made public. This
that the number of women in the
fueled for many more decades the
workforce would be inconsequenfaux storyline that women were not
tial and only allowed under certain
interested in, nor capable of perrestrictive circumstances, certainly
forming computing and related technot a key part the nation's postwar
nical tasks. At the end of WWII, only
economy. Because women in Britain
several hundred of the thousands of
had few opportunities for advancewomen at Bletchley were allowed to
ment or interesting work after WWII,
transition over to the then-coveted
many who had worked during the
government Civil Service computing
war years left the workforce volunjobs, the first of what would grow
tarily after they married.
to be Britain's enormous postwar,
After repeal of the marriage
largely female computing workforce.
bar in 1946, the British Civil SerAt odds with reality, however, the
vice created a substandard system
women's computing work inside the
called "machine grades" for womCivil Service system was regarded
en's computing work, in a delibas low level and subordinate to
erate effort to limit women's pay
the "real work," instead of squareand advancement opportunities.
ly at the core, of postwar computing.
Women's work still largely conThe roles women were allowed to fill
sisted of working with machines,
were seen as separate and beneath
perpetually viewed as low-skilled
the work in which their male coworksecretarial work and therefore
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