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" A 1964 study illustrated how status considerations could distort people's perceptions of the level of skill that was involved in various programming jobs. The study asked experienced computer personnel to distribute a list of programming tasks among a hierarchy of jobs–systems analyst, senior programmer, and programmer. The author found that "the higher the level of the job, the more job skills were included"–even if some of those tasks normally were performed by workers in the lower-status jobs. Higher-status workers were simply assumed to have a monopoly on skilled tasks, even by people who were familiar with the field and should have known better. We should not be surprised to find that employers, who often had no personal knowledge of programming, fell back on social categories when evaluating potential workers. "

, Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing


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 quote : A 1964 study illustrated how status considerations could distort people's perceptions of the level of skill that was involved in various programming jobs. The study asked experienced computer personnel to distribute a list of programming tasks among a hierarchy of jobs–systems analyst, senior programmer, and programmer. The author found that