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SUMMARY:Programmed Inequality: The consequences of gender-bias in the Brit
 ish computer industry. - Speaker to be confirmed
DTSTART:20210527T163000Z
DTEND:20210527T180000Z
UID:TALK160555@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jeremy Hughes
DESCRIPTION:A Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy webinar explori
 ng the consequences of gender-bias in the British computer industry.\n\nAb
 out this event\n\nIn 1944\, Britain led the world in electronic computing\
 , but thirty years later the British computer industry was all but extinct
 . How did this happen?\n\nFour years ago a young historian of technology\,
  Mar Hicks\, provided the first deeply-researched answer in a study of how
  the British industry changed by redefining computer-related employment in
  gendered terms.\n\nWomen had played a major role in computing in the wart
 ime and post-war eras.\n\nBut as the technology advanced\, and successive 
 governments began to perceive its industrial significance\, they were cons
 istently excluded from high-level computing jobs in the public sector beca
 use of their supposed lack of “leadership potential”\, and computing-r
 elated work was correspondingly undervalued.\n\nOne of the consequences of
  this gender bias was the eventual obliteration of the domestic mainframe 
 industry.\n\nNow that the consequences of gender-bias and imbalance in the
  modern tech industry are becoming striking\, the Minderoo Centre is holdi
 ng a Webinar to look back on this pathbreaking study.\n\nJoin us online to
  hear Mar Hicks\, Dame Wendy Hall FRS and other scholars in conversation.\
 n\nDate: 27 May at 17:30 BST\n\nAbout the speakers\n\nMar Hicks (they/them
 ) is an historian of technology\, gender\, and labour\, specialising in th
 e history of computing. Hicks’s book\, Programmed Inequality (MIT Press\
 , 2017) investigates how Britain lost its early lead in computing by disca
 rding the majority of their computer workers and experts -- simply because
  they were women. Their current project looks at transgender citizens’ i
 nteractions with the computerised systems of the British welfare state in 
 the 20th century\, and how these computerised systems determined whose bod
 ies and identities were allowed to exist. This work studies how collective
  understandings of progress are defined by competing discourses of social 
 value and economic productivity\, and how technologies often hide regressi
 ve ideals while espousing "revolutionary" or "disruptive" goals. Hicks has
  also co-edited a new book on computing history — Your Computer Is On Fi
 re (MIT Press\, 2020) and runs the Digital History Lab at Illinois Tech.\n
 \nDame Wendy Hall\, DBE\, FRS\, FREng (she/hers) is Regius Professor of Co
 mputer Science\, Associate Vice President (International Engagement)\, and
  is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at the University o
 f Southampton.\n\nWith Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt she co-f
 ounded the Web Science Re-search Initiative in 2006 and is the Managing Di
 rector of the Web Science Trust\, which has a global mission to support th
 e development of research\, education and thought leadership in Web Scienc
 e.\n\nShe became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New
  Year's Honours list and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.\n\nShe has prev
 iously been President of the ACM\, President of BCS\, Senior Vice Presiden
 t of the Royal Academy of Engineering\, a member of the UK Prime Minister
 ’s Council for Science and Technology\, was a founding member of the Eur
 opean Research Council and Chair of the European Commission’s ISTAG\, wa
 s a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance\, and was a mem
 ber of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on the Digital 
 Economy.\n\nDame Wendy was co-Chair of the UK government’s Artificial In
 telligence Review\, which was published in October 2017\, is the UK govern
 ment’s first Skills Champion for AI and is a member of the newly formed 
 AI Council. In May 2020\, she was appointed Chair of the Ada Lovelace Inst
 itute.
LOCATION: Webinar  (via Zoom online)
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