Five years down the line, Marie Hicks’ book Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (2017) continues in this scholastic tradition of critical history of gender in computing while extending the argument to the political economy of gender, work and technology at large. Hicks starts from the inception of the first digital, electronic, programmable computer—the Colossus in Great Britain during the Second World War—and follows the trajectory of technological change and computer work within British Civil Services until the early 1980s. Historical narratives in the book take a decadal approach to elaborate on the specific nature of computer work, the composition of labour and the larger policy context of the British Civil Services. As we move from wartime to peacetime, from electromechanical computer to electronic computer, from decolonisation to the Cold War, we see how British policymakers perceived the potential of computers in shaping the nation’s future and how that vision of the future intersected with the fate of the country’s women workforce in computing. Hicks skilfully recounts this entangled history by drawing on rich archival data, demographic data, media artefacts, individual interviews and other scholarly literature.

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书评：程序化的不平等：英国如何抛弃女性技术专家并失去其在计算领域的优势 作者：Marie Hicks

五年后，Marie Hicks 的著作 Programmed Inequality: How British Discarded Women Technologists and Lost its Edge in Computing (2017) 延续了计算性别批判史的学术传统，同时将论点扩展到性别政治经济学，工作和技术。希克斯从第一台数字、电子、可编程计算机（第二次世界大战期间英国的 Colossus）问世开始，一直追随英国公务员制度中技术变革和计算机工作的轨迹，直到 1980 年代初。书中的历史叙述采用了十年的方法来阐述计算机工作的具体性质、劳动力的构成以及英国公务员制度的更大政策背景。当我们从战时走向和平时期时，从机电计算机到电子计算机，从非殖民化到冷战，我们看到英国决策者如何看待计算机在塑造国家未来方面的潜力，以及这种未来愿景如何与该国从事计算工作的女性劳动力的命运相交。希克斯通过利用丰富的档案数据、人口统计数据、媒体人工制品、个人访谈和其他学术文献，巧妙地讲述了这段纠缠不清的历史。