Whether you like it or not, whether it's true or not, computing has a reputation for being a mens' club. And things like this don't help. So yes, this is an embarrassment to the industry whether you're directly responsible or not.
1842: Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), analyst of Charles Babbage's analytical engine and described as the "first computer programmer"[13]
1893: Henrietta Swan Leavitt joins the Harvard computers, a group of women engaged in the production of astronomical data at Harvard; she is instrumental in discovery of the cepheid variable stars, which were evidence for the expansion of the universe.
1926: Grete Hermann publishes the foundational paper for computerized algebra
1942: Hedy Lamarr (1913–2000), Hollywood diva and co-inventor of an early form of spread-spectrum broadcasting
1943: WREN Colossus operators, during WW2 at Bletchley Park
1946: Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Fran Bilas, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman, original programmers of the ENIAC
1949: Grace Hopper (1906–1992), United States Navy officer and first programmer of the Harvard Mark I, known as the "Mother of COBOL". Developed the first ever compiler for an electronic computer known as A-0.
1961: Dana Ulery (1938-), computer scientist; first female engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, developing real-time tracking systems using a North American Aviation Recomp II, 40-bit word size computer.
1962: Jean E. Sammet (1928-), mathematician and computer scientist; developed FORMAC programming language. Was the first to write extensively about history and categorisation of programming languages (1969).
1965: Mary Allen Wilkes computer programmer; First person to use a computer in a private home and the first developer of an operating system (LAP) for the first minicomputer (LINC)
1965: Sister Mary Kenneth Keller (1914? - 1985) first American female Doctorate of Computer Science (1965)[14] [15]
1972: Karen Spärck Jones (1935–2007), pioneer of information retrieval and natural language processing
1973: Lynn Conway (1938-), led the "LSI Systems" group; co-authored Introduction to VLSI Systems
1978: Sophie Wilson (?), designed the Acorn Microcomputer.
1979: Carol Shaw (?), game designer and programmer for Atari Corp. and Activision
1980: Carla Meninsky (?), game designer and programmer for Atari 2600 games Dodge 'Em and Warlords
1983: Adele Goldberg (1945-), one of the designers and developers of the Smalltalk language
1984: Roberta Williams (1953-), pioneering work in graphical adventure games for personal computers, particularly the King's Quest series.
1984: Susan Kare (1954-), created the icons and many of the interface elements for the original Apple Macintosh in the 1980s, was an original employee of NeXT, working as the Creative Director.
1985: Radia Perlman (1951-), invented the Spanning Tree Protocol. Has done extensive and innovative research, particularly on encryption and networking. USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award 2007, among numerous others.
1985: Irma Wyman (~1927-), first Honeywell CIO
1986: Hannah Smith "Girlie tipster" for CRASH (magazine)
1988: Eva Tardos (1957-), recipient of the Fulkerson Prize for her research on design and analysis of algorithms
1993: Shafi Goldwasser (1958-), theoretical computer scientist, two-time recipient of the Gödel Prize for research on complexity theory, cryptography and computational number theory, and the invention of zero-knowledge proofs
1993: Barbara Liskov together with Jeannette Wing develops the Liskov substitution principle
1994: Sally Floyd (~1953-), most renowned for her work on Transmission Control Protocol
1996: Xiaoyuan Tu (1967-), first female recipient of the ACM's Doctoral Dissertation Award.[16]
1997: Anita Borg (1949–2003), the founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT)
2001: Audrey Tang (1981-), initiator and leader of the Pugs project
2004: Jeri Ellsworth (1974-), self-taught computer chip designer and creator of the C64 Direct-to-TV
2005: Mary Lou Jepsen (1965-), Founder and chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC); founder of Pixel Qi.
2006: Frances E. Allen (1932-), first female recipient of the ACM's Turing Award
2009: Barbara H. Liskov (1939-), winner of the Turing prize 2009
Let's toss in there Carol Bartz, Meg Whitman, Mitchell Baker, Maria Cantwell, and even Carly Fiorina.
Yael Elish, Co-Founder and CEO of esnips- eSnips is a large social content sharing site that gives its members 5GB each of storage space to upload whatever they want.
Veerle Pieters, Founder, CEO and Graphic Designer of Duoh!-Web development services including design, DHTML layout creation, PHP scripting, database support, Flash.
Tiffany Bass Bukow, Founder and CEO of MsMoney.com-Financial Web site for women to learn about women’s unique financial needs, financial planning, personal finance, investing, retirement etc.
Susan Wu, Founder and CEO of Ohai – Online gaming platform
Stephany Alexander , Founder and CEO of WomanSaversWomanSavers – Dating Experts show you how to catch cheating men and screen your date free in the largest database rating men’s relationship history to date.
Simone van Trojen, Founder of LaDress- Find the perfect dress for any occasion. LaDress offers dresses in beautiful fabrics, timeless designs and high quality materials.
Simone Brummelhuis ,Founder and CEO of The NextWomen- The Next Women is the first Women’s Internet Business Magazine and Community, with a focus on startups and growing businesses, led, founded or invested in by women.
Shaa Wasmund, Founder and CEO of SmartaSmarta.com is a business support and advice network for start-ups, small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Sandy Kemsley , Founder of Column 2 - BPM, Enterprise 2.0 and technology trends in business.
Sally Robinson, Founder and Owner of Ample Bosom- Designer lingerie and bras for women with a fuller figure to order on-line.
Rebecca Blood, Founder of rebecca’s pocket- Writing about news, gothica, and web design resources.
Rachel Elnaugh, Founder of Red Letter Days- Discover unique gifts, gift experiences, activity days and gift ideas to solve all present buying dilemmas or buy experience days gift vouchers.
Nelly Yusupova , Founder of DigitalWoman- DigitalWoman is a web technology specialist, consultant and strategist, and motivating and inspiring speaker. She is the CTO of Webgrrls.
Julie Pankhurst , Co-Founder of Friends Reunite- Find ,reunite, contact old friends from school, work, college, university, neighbours, armed forces, expats.
Janet Hanson, Founder and CEO of 85 Broads – 85 Broads is an exclusive global women’s network with members who live, work, and study in 82 countries around the world.
Iris Ben-David, CEO and Founder of Style Shake – StyleShake empower millions of women to design freely, or personalize our top designs. Dresses are sewn to perfection in just 10 days!
Heidi Roizen, Founder, CEO and Chief Lyrical Officer of SkinnySongs- SkinnySongs motivates fans to lose weight and get fit. Lose weight and shape up with inspirational lyrics that are good for your body and soul.
Glenys Berd, Founder of LovethoseShoes - Health and Wellness Footwear Specialist. Now including Free Delivery and Free Returns on all brands. The company stock a wide range of Earth Footwear including shoes, sandals and trainers.
Gina Bianchini, Co-Founder and CEO of Ning – An online service to create, customize, and share a social network.
Georgie Coleridge-Cole, Founder and Editor of SheerLuxeSheerLuxe.com is a guide to online shopping. Editors bring you the products, fashions and retailers on the web daily.
Felicia Jackson, Co-Founder of Netimperative- Delivering online news and digital intelligence to business.
Erin Jansen, Co-Founder and Author of NetLingo-This site contains thousands of definitions about computers, the Internet, and the online world of business, technology & communication.
Eileen Gittins, Founder and CEO of Blurb -Make your own book with Blurb online. Create photo books, wedding books and more. Design and publish professional quality books to keep, give or sell.
Cyan Banister, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Zivity- Zivity is where people just like you rub elbows with models, photographers, and video artists in an ad-free social network.
Chrissie Rucker, Founder of The White Company – Primarily white linen, tablewear, furniture, accessories and gifts. Order online or request a catalogue.
Caterina Fake, Co-Founder of Flickr and hunch – Hunch personalizes the internet by getting to know you and then making recommendations for what you might like.
April Henry, Founder of Myspace.com- Social network site.
Anne-Marie Huby, Co-founder and MD of JustgivingJustGiving – One of the easiest way to fundraise and donate to charity online.
Anne Wojcicki, Co-founder 23andMe- 23andMe provides genetic testing for over 100 traits and diseases as well as DNA ancestry.
Amy Millman, Founder of Springboard Enterprises - Offers programs which educate, showcase and support women entrepreneurs as they seek equity capital and grow their companies.
Jean Armour Polly, Founder of Netmom.com - A website for kids.
The theory, often claimed, is that "X" is a man's world.
As I am sure you understand, all it takes is one data point to falsify a theory. I have provided dozens of well known women that have made enormous progress for computing. It took me about 30 seconds.
So for "X" equal computing, the theory fails, it is busted, it should be an ex-myth, pining for the fjords.
In fact, from its very beginning, by which I mean its VERY BEGINNING, women have played terribly important and substantial roles in computing. How is it you are unaware of this? It really is common knowledge.
Showing that there are lots of well known men will do nothing to prop the theory up.
I suggest you might have a more enlightening experience asking yourself why the busted myth persists.
You think that a single case, or a handful of cases, can disprove the claim because you think the claim is of the type "for all {men, women, industries}" and therefore you think that one, single point can disprove the claim.
Actually, the claim -- as with most human problems -- is of a probabilistic nature and subject to statistical reasoning.
That you think your insistence of the application of binary logic to interpersonal relationships is an enlightened approach is astonishing, and makes me wonder whether or not you're a psychopath.
Actually as far as I can tell computing has a reputation of being especially this way.
Personally I don't really understand why you'd want to defend the "there's nothing wrong, ignore this woman" point of view. You acknowledge there's a problem, although you don't think it's specific to this industry. Why take the course of action/defend the point of view least likely to improve the situation?
And your sweeping generalization of computing is based on? Some things you read on the Internet? A story you heard once from a female coworker?
I don't know how your shop is but in my shop this shit does not happen because we are overly selective with our hiring and extremely quick to fire. One tactic we have in interviews is to take the applicant to dinner and get him drunk with a female colleague present. Multiple otherwise-awesome applicants have earned a circular file at dinner.
> And your sweeping generalization of computing is based on?
The same thing as yours. My personal experiences and what I've heard. You have no more evidence that there is nothing especially wrong with computing than I have that there is.
> "but in my shop this shit does not happen"
That you've heard about. Although I suspect that if you share the same kinds opinions around your coworkers as you are sharing here, you've made a fair number of your feel uncomfortable and unwelcome without ever realizing it.
> One tactic we have in interviews is to take the applicant to dinner and get him drunk with a female colleague present.
Wow. IANAL but using a female coworker as a honeypot is probably opening your company up to liability. The standard for harassment or unfriendly working environment is what a reasonable person would consider the same. I'd vote in favor of the plaintiff if a colleague of yours asked to perform this duty ever sued your company. As a matter of policy you're knowingly putting an employee in a situation where they are more likely to be harassed specifically for the purpose of seeing if they get harassed.
Well, it's your ass on the line and not mine; for that I am thankful.
You're right, you're not a lawyer so you should be less willing to throw the word 'liability' around. You're armchairing your way to a legal conclusion based on two facts and a situation you're unaware of. Namely that this colleague was the one who came up with the idea and enjoys the responsibility. Look at her angle. She gets a less hostile workplace by helping screen out the creepers who will come after her later.
Feel free to armchair lawyer someone else because you really suck at it.
Feel free to armchair lawyer someone else because you really suck at it.
Armchair lawyering -- from my experience it usually looks and sounds much better to the practitioner than it does to any trained lawyers. Those practicing it are often convinced that they speak with authority, even though they're laughably wrong.
I see. So someone bans a female from a conference for not having sex with him, and the person who points out that this is embarrassing is disrespectful? I simply don't understand your logic (or lack thereof).
