The List (help me add to it and pass it on?)
Short Version:
So, although the linux cons may be all boys in black t-shirts, the same gender disparity actually doesn't hold among the best and the brightest of Computer Science/IT: many of the major advances in our field have been made and are still being made by women, and right now women are also running many of the major tech companies/organizations. Why weren't you aware of this? Why was the only name you knew Ada Lovelace (and not Joyce Reynolds who wrote Telnet, or Amy Pearl who led the team that created Java)? That is a damn good question. So for your enlightenment here's a kinda scary list, a selection of the CS/IT Things which are currently run by or were Invented (not just worked on, but created) by women:
Java, Ebay, Electronic Freedom Foundation, Wikipedia, Lucent, Xerox, Yahoo, Oracle, iRobot, the ACM, the NSF CS Directorate, Sun's Open Source group, One Laptop Per Child...
...modern privacy theory, the compiler & much of compiler theory, fundamental distributed systems theory, approximation algorithms, spanning trees & fault tolerant routing (foundations of the internet), latent semantic analysis & inverse document frequency (foundations of search englines), support vectors (*the* main technique in machine learning), the 'treap' data structure (and others), semantic networks, the software behind the Apollo mission...
...COBOL, FORTRAN, Telnet, and they were *actually* the first programmers (not Ada, but the first six programmers of ENIAC, and the developers of very many of the first useful applications and languages were women).
Interesting, isn't it? Bet most of your cs geek friends don't know about this either... so, tell them. Please link to this! The rockstars of CS aren't all male, but no one's talking about the chicks. So pass the word on yourself, ok?
Full List:
Quick Recap for Later Reference: The lack of women in computer science/IT is somewhat mythical at the highest levels of the field. Women actually make up a decent percentage of the best and the brightest. But when a woman is the highest ranking authority, the journalists go find someone else to talk to and the textbooks forget to mention them. I'll prove it. Did you know the following:
Current (or recent) Tech CEOs:
*Margaret C. Whitman, CEO of Ebay
*Esther Dyson, chair of the board of directors for Electronic Freedom Foundation
*Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikipedia
*Patricia F. Russo, CEO of Lucent Technologies,
*Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox
*Suw Charman-Anderson, Founder and Director of the Open Rights Group
*Danese Cooper, creator and original director of Sun's Open Source Programs Office
*Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo
*Susan Decker, recent President of Yahoo
*Helen Greiner, founder of major commercial robotics company iRobot
*Safra Catz, president of Oracle
Leaders of Major Institutions:
*Wendy Hall, President of the ACM
*Eva Tardos, Chair of Cornell CS department
*Mary Lou Soffa, Chair of University of Virginia CS department
*Ružena Bajcsy, Previous Head of NSF CS/Engineering Directorate
*Jean E. Sammet, President of ACM in 70's (also helped develop COBOL and created FORMIAC)
*Barbara Simons, also a previous President of ACM
Major Foundations of Theory:
*Cynthia Dwork, created modern privacy theory
*Nancy Lynch, developed much of distributed systems theory
*Margaret Masterman, first developed semantic networks for machine translation and AI
*Cecilia R. Aragon, created the 'treap' and many major algorithms for workflow and visualization.
*Susan Dumais, helped develop latent semantic indexing (without this google wouldn't work)
*Shafrira Goldwasser, created the foundations of approximation algorithm complexity theory
*Nancy Davis Griffeth, defined the feature interaction problem (software engineering/networking)
*Hava Siegelmann, co-invented support-vector clustering (fundamental technique in machine learning)
*Karen Spärck Jones, defined "inverse document frequency" (fundamental to all text search)
*Margaret Hamilton, pioneered ultra-reliable software (and wrote the apollo mission software)
Revolutionary Improvements in Tech:
*Grace Hopper, invented the compiler
*Mary Lou Jepsen, invented most of the tech for the One Laptop Per Child computer
*Amy Pearl, leader of group that developed java
*Jean E. Sammer, helped develop COBOL
*Henriette Davidson Avram, developed data standard/methods for digital library catalogs
*Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas were the original programmers for the ENIAC
*Betty Holberton went on to write the first statistics programming package, and help develop FORTRAN and COBOL.
*Radia Joy Perlman, invented spanning trees and fault-tolerant routing, foundations of the internet
*Joyce K. Reynolds, invented the telnet protocol
Awards:
*Shafi Goldwasser, Godel Prize (twice)
*Frances E. Allen, Turing Award
*Barbara Liskov, Turing Award
So, although the linux cons may be all boys in black t-shirts, the same gender disparity actually doesn't hold among the best and the brightest of Computer Science/IT: many of the major advances in our field have been made and are still being made by women, and right now women are also running many of the major tech companies/organizations. Why weren't you aware of this? Why was the only name you knew Ada Lovelace (and not Joyce Reynolds who wrote Telnet, or Amy Pearl who led the team that created Java)? That is a damn good question. So for your enlightenment here's a kinda scary list, a selection of the CS/IT Things which are currently run by or were Invented (not just worked on, but created) by women:
Java, Ebay, Electronic Freedom Foundation, Wikipedia, Lucent, Xerox, Yahoo, Oracle, iRobot, the ACM, the NSF CS Directorate, Sun's Open Source group, One Laptop Per Child...
...modern privacy theory, the compiler & much of compiler theory, fundamental distributed systems theory, approximation algorithms, spanning trees & fault tolerant routing (foundations of the internet), latent semantic analysis & inverse document frequency (foundations of search englines), support vectors (*the* main technique in machine learning), the 'treap' data structure (and others), semantic networks, the software behind the Apollo mission...
...COBOL, FORTRAN, Telnet, and they were *actually* the first programmers (not Ada, but the first six programmers of ENIAC, and the developers of very many of the first useful applications and languages were women).
Interesting, isn't it? Bet most of your cs geek friends don't know about this either... so, tell them. Please link to this! The rockstars of CS aren't all male, but no one's talking about the chicks. So pass the word on yourself, ok?
Full List:
Quick Recap for Later Reference: The lack of women in computer science/IT is somewhat mythical at the highest levels of the field. Women actually make up a decent percentage of the best and the brightest. But when a woman is the highest ranking authority, the journalists go find someone else to talk to and the textbooks forget to mention them. I'll prove it. Did you know the following:
Current (or recent) Tech CEOs:
*Margaret C. Whitman, CEO of Ebay
*Esther Dyson, chair of the board of directors for Electronic Freedom Foundation
*Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikipedia
*Patricia F. Russo, CEO of Lucent Technologies,
*Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox
*Suw Charman-Anderson, Founder and Director of the Open Rights Group
*Danese Cooper, creator and original director of Sun's Open Source Programs Office
*Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo
*Susan Decker, recent President of Yahoo
*Helen Greiner, founder of major commercial robotics company iRobot
*Safra Catz, president of Oracle
Leaders of Major Institutions:
*Wendy Hall, President of the ACM
*Eva Tardos, Chair of Cornell CS department
*Mary Lou Soffa, Chair of University of Virginia CS department
*Ružena Bajcsy, Previous Head of NSF CS/Engineering Directorate
*Jean E. Sammet, President of ACM in 70's (also helped develop COBOL and created FORMIAC)
*Barbara Simons, also a previous President of ACM
Major Foundations of Theory:
*Cynthia Dwork, created modern privacy theory
*Nancy Lynch, developed much of distributed systems theory
*Margaret Masterman, first developed semantic networks for machine translation and AI
*Cecilia R. Aragon, created the 'treap' and many major algorithms for workflow and visualization.
*Susan Dumais, helped develop latent semantic indexing (without this google wouldn't work)
*Shafrira Goldwasser, created the foundations of approximation algorithm complexity theory
*Nancy Davis Griffeth, defined the feature interaction problem (software engineering/networking)
*Hava Siegelmann, co-invented support-vector clustering (fundamental technique in machine learning)
*Karen Spärck Jones, defined "inverse document frequency" (fundamental to all text search)
*Margaret Hamilton, pioneered ultra-reliable software (and wrote the apollo mission software)
Revolutionary Improvements in Tech:
*Grace Hopper, invented the compiler
*Mary Lou Jepsen, invented most of the tech for the One Laptop Per Child computer
*Amy Pearl, leader of group that developed java
*Jean E. Sammer, helped develop COBOL
*Henriette Davidson Avram, developed data standard/methods for digital library catalogs
*Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas were the original programmers for the ENIAC
*Betty Holberton went on to write the first statistics programming package, and help develop FORTRAN and COBOL.
*Radia Joy Perlman, invented spanning trees and fault-tolerant routing, foundations of the internet
*Joyce K. Reynolds, invented the telnet protocol
Awards:
*Shafi Goldwasser, Godel Prize (twice)
*Frances E. Allen, Turing Award
*Barbara Liskov, Turing Award