how did female pronouns become so common as gender-neutral in programming books?

Question

NOTE: I think this is a good thing.

I've read a lot of computer books, as I'm sure many of you have, and I've noticed that many (far more than half) of these books use "she" and "her" to refer to unnamed programmers/users/etc, rather than "he" or "him". I don't read a lot of other nonfiction, so I can't comment on other subject areas, but I've been surprised at how consistent this seems to be in programming literature, given that "he" and "him" are much more common in general. Really I think it's a pretty cool thing, especially given that programming is such a male-dominated field; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the literature reinforced this, but instead it seems to be pushing the other way.

Anyway, assuming I'm not imagining this, does anybody know how it came to pass? Was there a group of publishers and authors that got together one day and decided to make it happen? Did some publisher start doing it and become a trend-setter? Has it been this way since day one? I haven't been able to locate any discussion of this on the web, but I've been wondering about it for years.

By the way, this clearly doesn't relate to getting Java code to compile or diagnosing obscure C++ linker errors, but I still think it's programming-related, as much so as any other question about programming books.

Answer 1

A lot of people in general, and programming authors in specific have adopted a 'politically correct' view of language, and they want to change the English language standard that we've had to a new one that fits their view better. While you can see this kind of intentional language changing out there in the world at large, I think a larger percentage of programming books show it because programmers are all about manipulating language.

Answer 2

I think that people use she/her as a "shield" against any accusations of sexism aimed at the author in what really is a male-dominated field. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but it does seem odd when reading it.

I'd agree that the brain is probably noticing the female pronouns more obviously, simply because they're still not commonly used when a gender-neutral pronoun would suffice.

Answer 3

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it's said that the first programmer was female?

The tradition likely started with a few early, influential books written by respected authors.