Computers Are for Girls – Datagubbe.se

Summary

Computers are for Girls A deep dive into early home computer ads. Late 2022 Quick link: Skip my boring ramblings and go straight to the gallery of 1980:s home computer ads! Toys for Boys In the early 1980:s, roughly coinciding (give or take a few years) with the launch of popular home computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 400 and TRS-80, the ratio of female applicants to enroll in computer science dropped drastically, at least in the US. One reason given for this is that home computers were specifically marketed as being for boys. I'm not sure where this idea originates - possibly from British computer scientist Wendy Hall ("... the marketing of computers to fathers and their sons turned women off computing ...", Hall says) - but I've seen it repeated enough times in both journalistic writing and online forum posts that it seems to have become a self-evident truth. It's on Wikipedia, too, but Wikipedia cites the aforementioned NPR article based on a Podcast episode, which is in turn based on a hunch or gut feeling one of the reporters had after watching some home computer commercials on Youtube. In short, this explanation bothers me, because I simply don't think it holds up. Let's examine! The Swedish Situation I dare say it's true that home computers were mostly used by boys - at least in Sweden, when I was a geeky kid in the late eighties and early nineties. This is interesting, because I think Sweden at this point in time is a useful control group. Compared to the current state of affairs, US cultural influence here was much weaker in the early eighties, when many home computers were initially launched. When the C64 arrived in Sweden in 1983, there were two TV channels, both controlled by the government and with no advertising whatsoever. Advertising aimed at children (below 12) and youths (below 16) was (and still is, to some extent) heavily regulated. In fact, some of the most popular comic books and youth magazines at this time, such as Bamse and Ka...