Join the Department of Humanities on Wednesday, April 26 from 1–2 p.m. in The McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) Yellow Room (Room 705) for a reception honoring Lewis College of Human Sciences Assistant Professor of History Marie Hicks in celebration of her book, Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.

Refreshments will be served.

Women used to be present in computer work in higher percentages than they are today. Ever wonder what happened? Turns out the story of gender and the process of computing are much more tightly linked than we once thought.

In Programmed Inequality, Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that destroyed British computing. In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers.

Hicks holds degrees from Harvard and Duke, and is currently an assistant professor at Illinois Institute of Technology. Read more at: mariehicks.net.