Gender and computing in retrospect: the case of Finland

Examines the cultures and professional practices of Finnish computing from the late 1950s to the early 1970s by using autobiographies of computing pioneers as well as the archive material of the Finnish Information Technology Association. The legacy of the pioneer culture is embedded in the gender processes that (at first sight paradoxically) both give room to women experts and consist of exclusive "worlds without women". Finnish women's major entrance to computing in the 1970s and 1980s could not remove the exclusive spheres. Equal opportunity in information technology presumes a full acknowledgment of the gender processes in the culture, identity and social orders of information technology.