Gender and computing in retrospect: The case of Finland

The paper examines the cultures and professional practices of Finnish compu ting from the late 1950s to the early 1970s by using autobiographies of com puting pioneers as well as the archive material of the Finnish information Technology Association. The legacy of the pioneer culture is embedded in th e gender processes that (at first sight in a paradoxical way) both give roo m to women experts and consist of exclusive "worlds without women." Finnish women's major entrance to computing in the 1970s and 1980s could not remov e the exclusive spheres. Equal opportunity in information technology presum es a full acknowledgment of the gender processes in the culture, identify, and social orders of information technology.