[SIGCIS-Members] The Women of Datamation

Wed Sep 2 15:11:02 PDT 2015

Hi Dag,

A rich and complicated topic to say the least! It would be great to have
more articles on the subject. Here's a few general thoughts/references, and
I'm sure many more of us on the list can be of help here.

To frame your question in the larger history of the representation of women
and technology w/i consumer culture, I'd check out Julie Wosk's *Women and
the Machine*. It's a good general overview of the topic.

As for theoretical frames on this topic--within cultural studies, the
question of the representation of women in advertising is often framed
through one of "the gaze", which derives in part from a long tradition in
film theory (especially through psychoanalytic models). Laura Mulvey, "On
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" would be your starting point there,
but she's likely too theoretical/psychoanalytic for what you're aiming at
(although I'd pay my weight in gold for a computer history paper
referencing Laura Mulvey!). For something more general, more focused on
sociology and political economy, try Anthony Cortese, *Provocateur: Images
of Women and Minorities in Advertising*.

John Berger's *Ways of Seeing* is considered a foundational text in visual
culture, and his chapters on the history of the representation of the
female body are both accessible and illuminating.

In addition to the article Aristotle mentions, I'd direct you toward Marie
Hicks' essay on the subject of women in British computer advertising:
Hicks, Marie. "Only the Clothes Changed: Women Operators in British
Computing and Advertising, 1950-1970." *IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing* 32.4 (2010): 5-17.

Looking forward to other's suggestions!
Best,

Laine Nooney
www.lainenooney.com

DM <http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/> @ LMC <http://lmc.gatech.edu/> @ GT
<http://www.gatech.edu/>
Assistant Professor

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 4:48 AM Aristotle Tympas <tympas at phs.uoa.gr> wrote:

>
> Dear Dag,
>
> Best luck with your research. Regarding theoretical perpsectives on the
> interpretation of magazine images with women-computer ensembles (more
> accurately: men-computer-women ensembles), you may want to check the
> relevant references in this: Aristotle Tympas, Hara Konsta, Theodore
> Lekkas and Serkan Karas, ‘Constructing Gender and Computing in Advertising
> Images: Feminine and Masculine Computer Parts’, in Tom Misa (editor),
> Gender Codes: Women and Men in the Computing Professions, IEEE Press,
> 2010, 187-209.
>
> And feel free to contact Hara Konsta, a recent graduate of our PhD
> program, who may have more suggestions to offer (xkonsta at phs.uoa.gr).
>
> Best,
> Aristotle
>
> > Dear SIGCIS friends,
> >
> > I’m beginning research for a long-form essay on how women were used to
> > sell computers as protrayed in the industry magazine Datamation.
> >
> > I have completed my survey of images and am now seeking some guodance
> > abdout possible theoretical perspectives to consider.
> >
> > Estelle Freedman at Stanford pointed me to The Feminine Mystique, which I
> > am now reading.  Of course, that was written many decades ago.  I don’t
> > really track the scholarship in this area so any pointers would be
> greatly
> > appreciated.
> >
> > Working observation: In the late 1950s, women were portrayed as
> > functional, "sensibly” dressed, clerical workers using the computer in a
> > (contrived) but plausibly real-world application.  Beginning in the
> > mid-1960s and onwards into the mid 1970s, women were portrayed as highly
> > sexualized, alluringly dressed “human parsley,” garnishing a computer
> > product -- in one case literally draped over a mainframe CPU cabinet in a
> > bikini — with no relevance or appeal to the usual benfits cited for
> > computers, viz. efficiency, cost-control, &c.  One of many questions I
> > have: Does this long-term movement to sex rather than the prior economic
> > or technical arguments reflect a change in the people making computer
> > purchasing decisions?  Was it an ephemeral trope in adverstising — “it
> was
> > the 60s, man!” or something else?  Sex sells… but who’s buying?  How does
> > the portrayal of women in the leading journal for the ccomputer industry
> > over decades reflect buerys and sellers?  Can we draw parallels with how
> > other technologies have used women in their advertising?   &c.
> >
> > Thanks for any thoughts…
> >
> > Dag
> > --
> > Dag Spicer
> > Senior Curator
> > Computer History Museum
> > Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
> > 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard
> > Mountain View, CA 94043-1311
> >
> > Tel: +1 650 810 1035
> > Fax: +1 650 810 1055
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> Αριστοτέλης Τύμπας / Aristotle Tympas
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy and History of Science
> School of Science
> National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
>
> tympas at phs.uoa.gr
> http://www.phs.uoa.gr/hst/Faculty/Tympas.html
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Laine Nooney
www.lainenooney.com

DM <http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/> @ LMC <http://lmc.gatech.edu/> @ GT
<http://www.gatech.edu/>
Assistant Professor
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