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Public Conference, 30 May 2008
Charles Babbage Institute, Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455

**** Registration now open ****

Women were active participants in building and programming the first electronic digital computers, and notably prominent in the first generation of computer programmers in the 1950s, but they have faced serious barriers to full participation in the computing professions. Today, computing persists as one of the most gender-segregated domains of modern life. How and when did a male-coded world of computing emerge? How and why has it has continued? What are the exceptions — and promising strategies for change?

The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota presents a day-long public conference devoted to a much-needed examination of these questions. While the National Science Foundation and other policy actors have devoted immense resources to increasing women’s participation in computing, over the past two decades there has been a striking **drop** in women’s participation in computing education and a corresponding tail-off in the U.S. workforce. Clearly, an important “missing piece” is yet to be discovered. This international conference, with participants from six countries, examines gender and the diverse uses of computing in offices, libraries, schools, mass media, and the computing profession. The eight papers will spark lively audience discussion on these themes:

* Automation, skill, and power;
* Gender discourse and imagery;
* Boundaries and identity;
* Gendered cultures of work and play.

Complementing these presentations is a scheduled poster session, showcasing additional views and innovative projects, as well as a viewing of “Gendered Bits: Identities, Practices, and Artifacts in Computing.” This new exhibit, curated by CBI archivist Arvid Nelsen, explores how gender has shaped the professional identities and material culture of computing. Using materials from CBI’s extensive archival holdings in the history of computing, as well as the Children’s Literature Research Collections, it presents the contributions, struggles, and shifting roles of women as well as raises questions about gender broadly and the specific issues of masculinity. The exhibit in Andersen Library will be open 28 May through 23 July 2008.

Register _now_ for the conference and get a free lunch! For registration, the conference program, travel and lodging details, a bibliography with key literature, and useful links see www.umn.edu/~tmisa/gender/. Please
direct questions to <cbi@umn.edu>.

 I’m sure funds that WITH receives in dues and other contributions mainly are applied to the travel award and our functions at SHOT.  I would like to see if there could be a category for such work as Melanie has done for our website, too.

Also, thanks, Heather, for getting back to me about your proposed panel.  Maybe it will be possible to present it, or a similar one, next year.  As some in WITH will remember, our first SHOT panel in 1976, along with the Dynamos and Virgins book that followed, had a paper by Vern Bullough on aspects of reproductive technologies.  Perhaps he and/or his wife would be interested in helping provide input w. r. t. your session, if it should be offered in the future at SHOT. 

I am glad that Daryl proposed a very interesting session for Lisbon involving another major area of the history of women and technology that was one of the earliest subject areas we dealt with in our first session and in the Dynamos and Virgins book.  I do hope it is accepted.

Re the discussion about women at MIT, Ellen Swallow Richards, about whom I’ve written in several books and papers, was, as far as I know, the first female student and faculty member there.  I think that is who Heather is referring to w. r. t. 1871. As those of us who have studied her know, she wasn’t treated very well, especially in the loss of her earned Ph. D. due to discrimination.  I interviewed some women faculty and former students at MIT in my 25-year study on the history of women in engineering.  Vi  Haas told me that when she was a Ph. D. student in math there, MIT gave her and several other female graduate students a broom closet, literally, as an office!  She said that the isolation she and the others felt there in the 40s and 50s was still quite extreme.  I myself wanted to attend MIT and was accepted for graduate work in chemistry there in the mid-1960s, when there were still very few women there.  MIT has publicly recognized for some time that Ellen Swallow Richards did not receive the best treatment there.  I feel sure that it is very different now, as I think some of our female colleagues in WITH and SHOT experience.

 My lengthy book, which was published in 1996 as an archival resource as well as a history New Images, New Paths: A History of Women in Engineering i n the U. S., 1850-1980 details some of this information and is held in various libraries and archives in this country and elsewhere. Marilyn Bever’s book also contains very useful information on women at MIT in the past.

Finally, that brings up Rachel and Daryl’s request that we send in bibliographic information for the WITH bibliography. When Daryl first asked us for this, I sent her something a year or two ago, and she said she received it.  I don’t know if Rachel has it, or it I should send another.  You can find most of the citations on my company’s webpage, T & L Enterprises.  I can send the information again, if you need me to do so.

Also, re the WITH at 21 and 50 comments, my copies of our earliest WITH newsletters, beginning in 1976, are still in boxes or filing cabinets in storage.  I never learned whether our WITH/SHOT archives holds these early copies.  I can find them, I’m sure.  I was the first WITH secretary and newsletter editor.  That was not noted in the WITH at 21.  That is one correction I can note.  I’m also concerned that we update accurately the names and dates of other secretary-treasurers and newsletter editors (I also took in dues, established a WITH account and served as the first WITH treasurer).  I think some have written the WITHlist about their involvements and dates.  We can probably get that information from the past WITH newsletters.

Sorry for the long post, but when I finally do get the time in this traveling, I respond to a week or so of posts.

 Martha 

Thanks, Rachel Maines

Di

Just received the following from a local high school teacher:

“I would be interested if any of you know where the name “Murgatroyd” came from for a female student at MIT in the 1940s. I recall seeing a caricature of the flat-chested nerdy-looking “Murgatroyd” in my Dad’s yearbook or newsletter or something, but I can’t find it anywhere in the papers he left behind. (There were very few women in my Dad’s class of 1948. He was so disappointed that I didn’t want to go there in 1967!) Google didn’t help, so I went to the MIT website to read about the history of female students. (First female student 1871)”

I’m stumped. Does anyone have any ideas?

thanks,

Heather Munro Prescott, Ph.D.
Professor of History
Coordinator, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Central Connecticut State University

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“Withniks,

Perhaps you can help with this puzzle. We have, in our very small museum, this tool:
http://people.whitman.edu/~lermanne/museum/What-is-this.html

If you could tell me of a similar tool, a person who may know about it, or any published information on such tools, the student in my Social History of Stuff” class who adopted it for her “artifact journal” (and indeed the museum staff) will be most grateful.

Many thanks! Nina”

This appears on the SHOT website, but I wanted to send a reminder to the WITH list:

The IEEE Life Members’ Prize in Electrical History, supported by the IEEE Life Members’ Fund and administered by the Society for the History of Technology, is awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology—power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science—published during the preceding year. Any article published in a learned periodical is eligible if it treats the art or engineering aspects of electrotechnology and its practitioners. The article must be written in English, although the journal or periodical in which it appears may be a foreign language publication. The prize consists of a cash award of $500 and a certificate. To nominate an article, please send a copy of the paper to each member of the prize committee. DEADLINE IS APRIL 15.

Susan Schmidt Horning (chair)
Department of History
St. John’s University
8000 Utopia Parkway
Jamaica, NY 11439
schmidts@stjohns.edu

Andrew J. Butrica
Defense Acquisition History Project
U.S. Army Center of Military History
103 Third Ave., Bldg. 35
Fort Mcnair D.C. 20319-5058
abutrica@earthlink.net

Robert MacDougall
Department of History
University of Western Ontario
Social Science Centre, Room 4328
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2
rmacdou@uwo.ca

The SHOT Special Interest Group Women in Technological History [WITH] announces its travel grant for 2008. The purpose of the award is to encourage participation of “new voices” at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology [SHOT].

The 2008 meeting will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, October 11-14, 2008 (See http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annualmtg.html)

“New voices” seeks topics or perspectives underrepresented in SHOT, and invites scholars from underrepresented constituencies, geographic and cultural. Eligibility for the WITH Travel Award is open to individuals who are giving a paper at the SHOT annual meeting. Graduate students and other scholars new to SHOT are particularly encouraged to apply for the award. Seeking to foster exchange of ideas among cultures and to help broaden the intellectual scope of our field, the WITH Travel Award will support papers that especially consider questions of ethnicity, gender, and modes of difference in the history of technology, and scholars who come from non-US and non-Western venues.

The award will include registration for the Lisbon meeting, a year’s membership to SHOT and WITH, the WITH breakfast or lunch, the graduate student breakfast (if appropriate), and the awards banquet; the balance of funds will be allocated to travel expenses.

Priorities for the WITH award will go to:

1. a scholar or graduate student new to SHOT belonging to a group underrepresented in SHOT, whose paper addresses issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and/or difference in the history of technology;
2. a non-US, non-Western graduate student or scholar new to SHOT presenting on any topic.

The WITH award is to be granted to individuals who are giving a paper at the SHOT annual meeting. Deadline for papers-proposals for the SHOT 2008 annual meeting is March 14, 2008, for further information please see http://shotnews.net/?p=401.

How to apply:

Download an application form:
WITH_travel_award_form_08.pdf
WITH_travel_award_form_08.doc

The application deadline for the WITH Travel Award will be June 15th 2008.

For more information about the WITH Travel Award and the application form, please go to the WITH-Homepage at http://www.women-in-technological-history.net or contact Martina Blum, email: t7911ai@mail.lrz-muenchen.de.

Dr. Martina Blum
Zentralinstitut für Geschichte der Technik
c/o Deutsches Museum
80306 München

Travel Award History

The WITH Travel Award was established in 2005. The winners to date:

2005: Tanfer Emin-Tunc, “Beyond the First Trimester: Technological Change in Mid to Late Term Pregnancy Termination” Ph.D. candidate, SUNY at Stony Brook

2006: Mara Mills, “’The Deaf May Lead the Way’: Sound Spectography and Visible Speech” Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University, Department of the History of Science

2007: No award.

2008: Could be you!