ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. Compute. Beyond the Amateur/Professional Divide in Astronomy and Early Computing

• In Event: CTRL ALT SHIFT. Expériences, Knowledge, Activism, Methods - 4

English Abstract

This paper revisits the classic amateur/professional divide—central to histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scientific professionalization—to show that it inadequately captures women’s scientific labor. Standard definitions treat “professionals” as salaried, institutionally appointed researchers and “amateurs” as unpaid, unaffiliated contributors. For men, this binary is often serviceable; for women, it breaks down. History reveals women who conducted research for pay without formal appointments; women who held appointments without salaries; and women whose work was categorized as “help”—frequently assisting related male researchers—despite substantive intellectual contributions. Because these decades coincided with the slow opening of universities to women, the analysis also attends to pathways of expertise: university training, familial apprenticeship, and self-instruction, at a time when credentials themselves became a gatekeeping criterion for “professionals.”
Empirically, the paper focuses on astronomy and computing. In astronomy, professionalization restructured the labor market in ways that displaced women from visible research roles, even as institutions employed women extensively as “computers.” I trace how this gendered division of labor migrated into early computing, where women’s expertise proved foundational yet was systematically relegated to marginal positions and inferior conditions relative to men. By linking classification, training pathways, and employment regimes across these fields, the paper proposes a more nuanced framework for recognizing women’s scientific work beyond the amateur/professional binary.

Author

• Eva Kaufholz-Soldat, Koblenz University