Editing History of computing (section)

== Important women and their contributions ==

Women are often underrepresented in [[STEM fields]] when compared to their male counterparts.<ref>{{cite magazine
| first = Blanca
| last = Myers
| date = March 3, 2018
| url = https://www.wired.com/story/computer-science-graduates-diversity/
| title = Women and Minorities in Tech, By the Numbers
| magazine = [[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] }}</ref> In the modern era before the 1960s, computing was widely seen as "women's work" since it was associated with the operation of [[tabulating machines]] and other mechanical office work.<ref>
{{Cite book|first=Nathan|last=Ensmenger|year=2012|title=The Computer Boys Take Over|isbn=978-0-262-51796-6|page=38|publisher=MIT Press }}
</ref><ref>{{Cite book|first=Mar|last=Hicks|year=2017|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1089728009|title=Programmed inequality: how Britain discarded women technologists and lost its edge in computing|isbn=978-0-262-53518-2|oclc=1089728009|page=1|publisher=MIT Press }}
</ref> The accuracy of this association varied from place to place. In America, [[Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)|Margaret Hamilton]] recalled an environment dominated by men,<ref>{{cite web
| first = Jolene
| last = Creighton
| date = July 7, 2016
| url = https://futurism.com/margaret-hamilton-the-untold-story-of-the-woman-who-took-us-to-the-moon
| title = Margaret Hamilton: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Took Us to the Moon
| publisher = Futurism.com }}
</ref> while [[Elsie Shutt]] recalled surprise at seeing even half of the computer operators at Raytheon were men.<ref>{{cite web
| first = Clive
| last = Thompson
| date = February 13, 2019
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html
| title = The Secret History of Women in Coding
| work = [[New York Times]] }}
</ref> Machine operators in Britain were mostly women into the early 1970s.<ref>
{{harvnb|Hicks|2017|pp=215–216}}: "The Civil Service's computing workforce continued to bifurcate along both gendered and class lines, even though among machine operators in industry and government there were still more than 6.5 times as many women as men in 1971."
</ref> As these perceptions changed and computing became a high-status career, the field became more dominated by men.<ref>{{cite web
| first = Rhaina
| last = Cohen
| date = September 7, 2016
| url = https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/what-programmings-past-reveals-about-todays-gender-pay-gap/498797/
| title = What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender Pay Gap
| publisher = [[The Atlantic]] }}
</ref><ref>
{{harvnb|Hicks|2017|pp=1–9}}: "In the 1940s, computer operation and programming was viewed as women's work—but by the 1960s, as computing gained prominence and influence, men displaced the thousands of women who had been pioneers in a feminized field of endeavor, and the field acquired a distinctly masculine image ... Soon, women became synonymous with office machine operators and their work became tied to typewriters, desktop accounting machines, and room-sized punched card equipment installations ... Their alignment with machine work in offices persisted through waves of equipment upgrades and eventually through the changeover from electromechanical to electronic systems."
</ref><ref>
{{harvnb|Ensmenger|2012|p=239}}: "Over the 1960s, developments in the computing professions were creating new barriers to female participation. An activity originally intended to be performed by low-status, clerical—and more often than not, female—computer programming was gradually and deliberately transformed into a high-status, scientific, and masculine discipline .... In 1965, for example, the Association for Computing Machinery imposed a four-year degree requirement for membership that, in an era when there were almost twice as many male as there were female college undergraduates, excluded significantly more women than men ... Similarly, certification programs or licensing requirements erected barriers to entry that disproportionately affected women."
</ref> Professor [[Janet Abbate]], in her book ''Recoding Gender'', writes:<blockquote>Yet women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing. They made up the majority of the first computer programmers during World War II; they held positions of responsibility and influence in the early computer industry; and they were employed in numbers that, while a small minority of the total, compared favorably with women's representation in many other areas of science and engineering. Some female programmers of the 1950s and 1960s would have scoffed at the notion that programming would ever be considered a masculine occupation, yet these women’s experiences and contributions were forgotten all too quickly.<ref>
{{Cite book|last=Abbate|first=Janet|author-link=Janet Abbate|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/813929041|title=Recoding gender : women's changing participation in computing|date=2012|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0-262-30546-4|location=Cambridge, Mass.|oclc=813929041|page=1}}
</ref></blockquote>

Some notable examples of women in the history of computing are:
* [[Ada Lovelace]]: wrote the addendum to Babbage's Analytical Machine. Detailing, in poetic style, the first computer algorithm; a description of exactly how The Analytical Machine should have worked based on its design.
* [[Grace Hopper|Grace Murray Hopper]]: a pioneer of computing. She worked alongside [[Howard H. Aiken]] on IBM's Mark I. Hopper and also came up with the term "[[debugging]]."
* [[Hedy Lamarr]]: invented a "[[frequency-hopping spread spectrum|frequency hopping]]" technology that the Navy used during World War II to control torpedoes via radio signals. This same technology is also used today in creating [[Bluetooth]] and [[Wi-Fi]] signals.
* [[Betty Holberton|Frances Elizabeth "Betty" Holberton]]: invented "[[breakpoint]]s" which are mini pauses<!--"mini pauses"? this should be rewritten--> put into lines of computer code to help programmers easily detect, troubleshoot, and solve problems.
*The women who originally programmed the [[ENIAC]]: [[Kathleen Antonelli|Kay McNulty]], [[Jean Bartik|Betty Jennings]], [[Marlyn Wescoff|Marlyn Meltzer]], [[Frances Spence|Fran Bilas]], [[Ruth Teitelbaum|Ruth Lichterman]], and Betty Holberton (see above.)
* [[Jean E. Sammet]]: co-designed [[COBOL]], a widely used programming language.
* [[Frances Allen]]: [[computer scientist]] and pioneer in the field of [[optimizing compiler]]s, first woman to win the [[Turing Award]].
* [[Karen Spärck Jones]]: responsible for "[[Tf–idf|inverse document frequency]]" - a concept that is most commonly used by search engines.
* [[Dana Angluin]]: made fundamental contributions to [[computational learning theory]].
* [[Margaret Hamilton (scientist)|Margaret Hamilton]]: the director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT, which developed on-board flight software for the [[Apollo space program|Apollo's]] Missions to Space.
* [[Barbara Liskov]]: developed the "[[Liskov substitution principle]]."
* [[Radia Perlman]]: invented the "[[Spanning Tree Protocol]]", a key network protocol used in [[Ethernet network]]s.
*[[Steve Shirley|Stephanie "Steve" Shirley]]: started [[F International]], a highly successful freelance software company.
*[[Sophie Wilson]]: helped design [[ARM architecture|ARM processor architecture]] widely used in many products such as smartphones and video games.
*[[Ann Hardy]]: pioneered computer [[time-sharing]] systems.
*[[Lynn Conway]]: revolutionised microchip design and production by co-introducing [[Very Large Scale Integration#Structured design|structured VLSI design]] among other inventions.
*The [[Women in Bletchley Park|women at Bletchley Park]]: around 8,000 women who worked in numerous capacities with British [[cryptanalysis]] during World War II. Many came from the [[Women's Royal Naval Service]] (who were called "wrens") as well as the [[Women's Auxiliary Air Force]] ("WAAFs.") They were instrumental in cracking the [[Cryptanalysis of the Enigma|"Enigma" cipher]] and helping the Allies win the war.