Caitlin, this is an interesting study! I'm not sure, though, if "today's engineers" would very readily coin gender-specific terms for parts of computers. These terms go back a long way. The "master-slave" terminology has going for it that the relationship between, say, a bus arbiter and connected devices is, in truth, a master-slave relationship. The other connotations make it hard for me to use the terms in class, but it's difficult to find synonyms. Controller-controlled? Decider-doer? Kind of awkward. (Suggestions welcome!) In contrast to the gendered terms, in describing the tree data structure, the relationship between nodes has always been parent-child, back at least to Knuth's volumes, not father-son, mother-son, or the like. Same with object/class hierarchies. - Bill ________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Wylie, Caitlin Donahue (cdw9y) [cdw9y@eservices.virginia.edu] Sent: Monday, May 22, 2017 8:11 PM To: members@SIGCIS.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] History of gendered terms, e.g., "motherboard" Dear all, Do you know of any studies of gendered language in computing? I’m intrigued by the way today’s engineers throw around words like “motherboard” and “daughterboard”, and also “master” and “slave”, without being aware of how those words sound to non-engineers (like me). I’d be interested in learning about historical or sociological studies. Thank you! All the best, Caitlin Wylie _______________________ Caitlin D. Wylie, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Program in Science, Technology and Society University of Virginia wylie@virginia.edu<mailto:wylie@virginia.edu> http://www.eands.virginia.edu/faculty-staff/wylie/