So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links?
Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.)
Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.
> So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links?
My first link includes more than one ad featuring girls.
They cited two advertisements and interviews with "hundreds" of students trying to recall why their parents bought computers.
If you're going to make the bold claim that computers "were marketed almost entirely to men and boys," then you've got to present some data on the marketing of the time. Especially when there are counter examples to the claim.
Even something like, "here are ten thousand computer ads from the 80s and boys outnumber girls by a significant margin" would work.
Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.)
Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.