Women in Computer Science

Despite living in 2017, and having a wide range of job opportunities in the computer science, women are still being significantly underrepresented in the field. Mostly, due to the fact girls aren’t as encouraged to pursue science and tech related careers as much as boys are, resulting in young girls growing apart from math and science, generally choosing opposite fields or the so-called “soft sciences” instead.

According to computerscience.org, though women now represent 47% of the workforce, as compared to 38% in the 1970s, only 12% of engineers are female. And even with projected growth of a 15-20% between 2012 and 2022, the vast majority of computer science jobs will be pursued and filled by men.

The message both the computer science industry and the society give to girls is clear:
“it’s a male dominated field, why would you even want to work there?”

Well, you might would.

Here are just a few examples of completely badass women whose contributions to the field are responsable for the vast majority of the things we use on a daily basis.

---

English mathematician credited with the creation of the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.

“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show”

---

Austrian-american actress and inventor, primarily self-taught, of frequency hopping spread spectrum, technology in which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are based.

“All creative people want to do the unexpected”

---

American computer scientist and Turing Award winner for her work in the design of programming languages, such as CLU, that led to the developement of object oriented programming, paving the way for a relatively easier way to create programs.

"It's much better to go for the thing that's exciting”

---

American software designer and network engineer who developed the algorithm behind spanning-tree protocol (STP), central to the operation of network bridges and a fundamental contribution to the underlying infrastructure of Internet. For this reason, she is often called as “the Mother of the Internet”.

“The world would be a better place if more engineers, like me, hated technology”

---

Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum.

All six women contributed to the programming of ENIAC, the first all electronic digital computer, determining not only how to input programs to the computer but also developing a greater understanding of ENIAC’s core. Many of them became pioneer programmers of innovative tools, later used to teach future software engineers new programming techniques.

“Everything I did was the beginning of something new”
Betty Holberton

---

Whether is computer science or any other male-dominated field, it’s important to provide girls with examples of strong, successful women thriving in their careers, some of them way ahead of their times, to give them a sense of confidence that may encourage them to opt for science related careers.

Because it is only by building their own network of badass women that they will feel less alone, and a lot more capable of doing what they want, despite living in a society that don’t believe in them.

---

Sources: computerscience.org, WITI, Wikipedia, Pexels