Women in Technology
International Women's Day is celebrated on March 8th. To mark the date, we published an article about the presence and importance of women in the world of technology.
The technology industry is one of the sectors where gender disparity becomes more evident. In Portugal, only 15.7% of jobs in this area are held by women, according to a study by the 2020 Women in Digital Scoreboard. In Silicon Valley - the world's epicenter of technology and innovation - only 8% of positions are held by females.
This discrepancy is based on a socio-cultural problem. Since they are children, men and women are encouraged to play differently, to dream of different careers, and then they are actually faced with very unequal opportunities. Girls are encouraged to play with dolls and kitchen sets, while boys are given cars, video games and soccer balls.
women are in the majority in higher education and study for longer, but when it comes to informatics, computers and innovation, they are still a strong>minority. In addition to the inequality of opportunities, the difference salary is also striking, despite constant efforts to close it.
If in the 21st century you still think that programming is “a boy's thing”, you are very wrong! women made History in the world of technology: Ada Lovelace was the creator of the first algorithm strong> to be processed by a machine; Grace Hopper invented the first computer code; and Karen Spärck created the concept of IDF, which is used in most search engines today. And these are just a few examples.
Read this article to find out more about the women who made a mark in technology!
Ada Lovelace
When talking about “Women in Tech” the name Ada Lovelace is mandatory. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, grew up in an aristocratic environment and had an excellent education - unusual for women at the time. In 1843 he translated an article by an Italian mathematician and complemented the study with his observations. These notes turned out to be better than the original article and contained an algorithm that was considered the >first computer program in history.
Furthermore, Ada Lovelace developed a study on the possibility of computers being used to perform other operations in addition to mathematical calculations, which was the focus of all researchers at the time. Unfortunately, he was unable to put it into practice, as he did not have the equipment capable of proving his investigation. Ada Lovelace was far ahead of her time and made remarkable discoveries and studies.
The ENIAC programmers
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first computer in history. It weighed 30 tons, occupied 167 square meters and was launched in 1946. This machine initially appeared in the North American army, during the Second World War.
Behind this innovative invention for the time, there were 6 women mathematicians who were erased from history: Jean Jennings Bartik, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, Betty Snyder Holberton, Frances Bilas Spence, and Kay Mauchly Antonelli. Unfairly, ENIAC was always associated with the project manager: John Mauchly.
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
Mary Kenneth Keller was the first woman to earn a doctorate in computer science. He received his degree in 1965 from Washington University, in the United States. His contribution to the world of technology was fundamental in the creation of the BASIC programming language - a more accessible language, created to simplify programming and for academic purposes.
Wrote four books on computing and programming, which are still a reference today. Currently, he gives his name to the Computer Science Center and a scholarship from the university where he worked for more than 20 years.
Jean Sammet
Sammet completed his PhD in Computer Science in 1968, three years after Sister Keller. She was the creator of one of the first existing programming languages - FORMAC, used to manipulate non-numeric mathematical formulas. He also worked at IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, one of the most influential companies in the field of technology) for 27 years, where he made major contributions to technological evolution.
Sammet also presided over the Association for Computing Machinery, a non-profit project that supports the use of computing in scientific and academic research. It currently has more than 70 thousand members, making it the largest association in the sector.
Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper was a super important woman in the technology sector. Their contributions to evolution are still used today. Early in her career, she became the first woman to graduate from Yale University with a PhD in mathematics and was also the first female admiral in the United States Navy. With the creation of COBOL, a programming language for commercial databases, still in use, it definitively entered history.
She is the author of the famous phrase “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission”, which represents the difficulty that women had (and still have) in entering the technology sector.
And Digiplanet is extremely proud to be made up 50% of Women who help our company grow every day. Without them nothing would be possible. A special thanks to all of them on this day.
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