INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Main image: Katherine Johnson
Credit: NASAFrom the early 19th century to the present day, women have played crucial roles in the development of technology, however they
programming, mathematics, and science have largely been written out of history by the technology industry, meaning their stories have at
regarded as a feminized role, with women making up the largest trained technical workforce in the computing industry from the Second World
to calculate ballistics and crack enemy codes during the war, and when computers made their way into the workplace it was women who worked
behind the scenes to ensure governments were able to collect data
It was a woman who sent the first manned US spaceflight into orbit.We've gone backwards, not forwardsDespite the early success of these
early innovators, as male managers began to realize the importance of computers in the 1970s, women were pushed out of the industry, and
their roles were given to men for higher pay
bias still exists today, on a huge scale
Google has been accused of underpaying women systematically, and in the US just 10% of women held the highest-ranking jobs in the industry
Who knows what this percentage would be if the female computing workforce hadn't been written out of history.If the tech industry is to
become more diverse, it's vital that we celebrate the female technology pioneers of the past, and the women making a difference in the
Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace was a 19th century mathematician and writer
Born in 1815 in London, she was the only legitimate child of Romantic poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Wentworth, and was encouraged by her
During this work she hypothesized applications for the computer beyond pure number-crunching, and published the very first example of an
algorithm to be used by a machine
She even predicted the use of computers to compose music.Although some (mostly male) biographers and historians have refuted the extent of
Sadly, she died young at 36 due to uterine cancer
Vantage Point, and she created a virtual reality demonstration on sexual harassment
Her goal was to address the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, which Stop Street Harassment reported 38% of women and 13% of men
have experienced.As a two-time survivor of sexual violence, Mercer was all too aware of how difficult it can be to talk about
Her pioneering technology immerses the user in a virtual workplace, where they become witness to sexual harassment taking place and can
learn about how to tackle these situations in a professional and empathetic manner.Compared to traditional training methods, which have a
knowledge retention rate of 20%, immersive training boasts a rate of 90%
However, Mercer is always looking for ways to improve the technology, and she's particularly interested in adding interactive speech so
users can speak in the virtual world, as well as training in how to report harassment.Katherine JohnsonNASA in the 1950s was dominated by
white men, but some talented women were able to rise through the ranks thanks to their hard work and challenging of the status quo
Perhaps the best-known of these pioneering women is Katherine Johnson, whose calculations played a crucial role in the first US manned space
flight.Born in 1918 in West Virginia, Johnson showed an aptitude for mathematics from an early age and was admitted to high school aged just
At the time her county didn't provide public education for African American children beyond the eighth grade, so her parents enrolled her in
State University, graduating with degrees in mathematics and French
Although she began her career in teaching, her dream was to be a research mathematician, and she accepted a job with NASA's predecessor
organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in its Guidance and Navigation Department.Johnson became joined a pool of
Although the department was mixed, in accordance with state racial segregation laws, Johnson and the other African-American employees were
experienced, her talent for calculating projectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for spacecrafts saw her become one of the
1986, and in 2015 the then 96-year-old was awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom by Barack Obama
The achievements of Johnson and the other women of the computing pool were celebrated in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures.Kim SwiftImage
While there, she designed Portal, the immensely popular first-person puzzle-platform game, which has won multiple awards for its innovative
Swift also designed Left 4 Dead, another Valve bestseller.Female game designers have typically had a difficult time in the industry,
particularly with the Gamergate controversy, which saw notable figures like Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn subjected to torrents of sexist abuse
supportive environment for women, trans, and non-gender binary professionals; however there's still a long way to go before the gaming
she was considered to old), and because her work at Vassar was considered too important for the war effort
Nevertheless, she requested a leave of absence from the college and entered the US Naval Reserve.She was assigned to the Bureau of Ships
Computation Project at Harvard University as a Lieutenant, where she worked on the Mark I electromechanical computer
While there, Hopper popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, and invented the compiler, which converts code
written in one programming language into another
This led to the invention of COBOL, an early high-level programming language based in English that's used to this day in Windows, OpenVMS,
and Unix.Hopper continued to rise up the ranks of the US Navy before being made commodore and then rear admiral by special Presidential
After a 42-year career with the Navy she retired in 1986 and was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal
synonymous with its creator Mark Zuckerburg, however you may not know that much about its chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.Sandberg
was born in 1969 in Washington D.C
emerging startup Google as its first business unit general manager, playing a key role in setting it on the path to becoming 100 billion
of the social media giant
policy, and communications.As well as her work at Facebook, Sandberg is the founder of LeanIn.Org, a non-profit organization that aims to
inventor.Having been discovered in the 1920s by producer Max Reinhart, she shot to stardom in Europe in films including No Money Needed and
In the late 1930s she moved to Hollywood and changed her name to Lamarr to distance herself from her earlier career and was signed by MGM
studios as a leading lady, appearing alongside the likes of Clarke Gable, Judy Garland and Lana Turner.Away from acting, Lamarr had another
Although she had no formal training, she was often tinkering away at her creations, including an improved traffic light system and a tablet
that dissolved in water to make a fizzy drink
Few knew about her proclivity for invention, aside from aviation tycoon Howard Hughes, who essentially gifted her his team of engineers.Her
most important invention came during World War II, when she realized that radio-controlled torpedoes could be knocked off course
technology until the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Lamarr's work was incorporated into early versions of Wi-Fi and today's
noise of the Doctor Who theme tune, but until 2013 the woman behind the music, Delia Derbyshire, remained uncredited on screen
Born in Coventry in 1937, she joined the BBC as a trainee studio assistant manager in 1960 after a failed application to Decca Records, who
told her they didn't allow women to work in their studios.Two years later she was assigned to the now-legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop,
In 1975 she stopped producing music commercially, although her long-term partner Clive Blackburn noted that she never stopped writing music
privately.Valentina TereshkovaValentina Tereshkova was the first woman to fly in space, as well as the first civilian
She was born in 1937 in central Russia, and became interested in parachuting from a young age, taking skydiving lessons while working at a
Following the first space flight by Yuri Gagarin in the same year, the Soviet space program became interested in sending a woman to space
In 1962, Tereshkova was selected along with four other women to join the female cosmonaut corps, and carried out training including
weightless flights, parachute jumping, pilot training, and spacecraft engineering
Her first and only space flight was in 1963, when she piloted the Vostok 6 spacecraft.She spent nearly three days in space, orbiting the
Her pioneering flight made space travel possible for female cosmonauts and astronauts who followed in her footsteps, proving that women were
and in 1977 she earned a doctorate in engineering
Alongside her career in the Russian air force, she held several prominent political positions within the Soviet government.Anne-Marie
ImafidonAnne Marie Imafidon is the founder of Stemettes, a social media enterprise promoting women in STEM (science, technology, engineering
and mathematics) careers.Born in the UK in 1990, Imafidon was a child prodigy in computing, mathematics, and language, and became the
Since then, she has received honorary doctorates from Open University Glasgow Caledonian University, and an honorary fellowship from Keble
just 24% of those working in core STEM industries according to WISE, however this does represent a significant increase in recent years,
demonstrating that positive change is happening thanks to initiatives like Stemettes.TheIndianSubcontinent's Next Up series is brought to
you in association with HonorPDurGmqNibFLwfxv4aa3fZ.jpg#
