There’s no doubt about it, technology is making sweeping changes in every area of our lives and, if you’ve ever found yourself sitting staring at a frozen computer screen and threatening to throw it out of the window for the 10th time before lunch, you might reckon that’s not such a good thing.
You also might, mistakenly, believe that tech is a territory dominated by men and boys, with a token representation of very geeky girls. And, of course, you’d be wrong. Wrong. Wrong!
Last year, a national assessment of engineering and technology skills in the US found that eighth-grade girls outperformed boys in all six areas tested — countering the long-held stereotype that boys have a more natural aptitude for these technical fields.
And even history bears witness to the fact that women, on the whole, are far from tech shy. More than 80 years ago, Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr became an overnight sensation for the Oscar-nominated film, Algiers. But, she also had a surprising double life as a pioneer in the field of wireless communications. Along with co-inventor George Anthiel, she developed a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel. It went on to become the technical backbone of later cell phones and wireless operations.
In World War II, it was a team of, mostly, women at the UK’s Bletchley Park that cracked the Enigma code which was hugely important in the allied victory. And, sticking with matters military, US Navy Rear Admiral, Grace Murray Hopper, was responsible for developing the first compiler for a computer programming language. In 1973 she became the first person from the USA, and the first woman ever, to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
Fast forward to today and it’s really no surprise that women are at the vanguard of technological development. Take, for example, Del Harvey, VP Trust and Safety, Twitter; Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM; and Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, to name just a few. For sure, females as still pretty heavily outnumbered but the times they are a-changin’ and over the following pages, you’ll meet some of the young women making their mark in this exciting field.
