But the war came to an end, and this enormous pool of technology expertise was marched back in to the home. All of the top jobs in technology became completely reserved for me – women were not even able to apply for these jobs. The only jobs in computing that were really open to women were the machine operator, and card puncher. These were extremely unpopular jobs – the work itself was boring and monotonous, and in noisy, clammy, uncomfortable environments. These were not long term career prospects for women – no one wanted to do it for more than a few years. But the problem was, after a few years in the job, there was no where else for the women to go if they wanted to stay in computing. There were active policies in place to prevent them from getting promoted within the industry, or even getting transferred to other departments. Even just getting promoted to a supervisor level was seen to be taking a job away from a man, so had to be avoided at all costs.