Join Me on Ada Lovelace Day
I've mainly stayed away from the discussion of gender issues in technology. I didn't think that I had any real expertise to share. But over the last six months, after many conversations, it has become clear that many of my female friends in tech really do feel disempowered. They feel invisible, lacking in confidence, and unsure how to compete for attention with the men around them.
Then I see the stupid puerile misogynistic manner with which some of the more powerful voices in the tech community -- some of them repeat offenders -- treat women, and it makes me very cross indeed. The objectification of women is bad enough when it's done by the media, but when it's done by a conference organiser or tech commentator or famous tech publication, what message does it send? Nothing but "You will never be taken seriously, but we might take notice of you if you're hot."
But what to do? Well, let's pull back from the anger a little, and start to look instead at why it might be that women feel less secure in their abilities than most men, and what might help change that. Undoubtedly it's a complex issue, but recent research may shed some light: Psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones.
Well, that's a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let's come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let's create new role models and make sure that whenever the question "Who are the leading women in tech?" is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.
Thus was born Ada Lovelace Day, and this pledge:
"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."
-- Suw Charman-Anderson (contact)
Deadline to sign up by: 24th March 2009
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.
It doesn't matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about - everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you're going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.
You'll notice that I've asked for 1,000 people to sign the pledge, which is an ambitious number. Indeed, PledgeBank makes a pretty strong point during the pledge creation process of asking people to limit their requests to 20 people, but I am sure that over the next 77 days we'll be able to find another 989 people to join us!
What can you do?
Obviously, and most importantly, please sign the pledge. If you already have a blog, then it will be easy for you to take part. If you don't have a blog, this might be a great reason to start one! It'll take you about five minutes to get yourself set up on Wordpress and then you'll be up and running!
Please also consider putting a pledge badge on your blog now or writing a short post about the project to help spread the word. You can also use the "Share This" link on the pledge itself to send the pledge to your favourite social bookmarking or news site, or to email it to a friend. The more people who send this link to Del.icio.us or Digg and the like, the more likely we are to hit our target!
Also, if you're on Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Identi.ca or any other microconversation tool, please ping a message to all your friends about Ada Lovelace Day, and don't forget the link! If you're on LinkedIn, you could also add it as your temporary status for a while.
It is going to be a challenge to hit 1,000 people -- we'll need an average of 13 people signing each day .- but if we all tell our friends about it, I think we can do it!
Keep up with Ada Lovelace Day news
I've got a Twitter account, mailing list and blog set up, so feel free to follow, subscribe and add to your RSS reader, as you wish!
What will happen next?
If Ada Lovelace Day is a success I'd like to make it an annual event. And, once the economy is in a better position, I'd like to put together a one day conference called Finding Ada. We would cover presentation skills and would introduce women to tech conference organisers, with the aim of getting more women up on stage at tech conferences. At the moment, I'm short of money to get Finding Ada moving, so if you'd like to be a sponsor please get in touch and I'll tell you more about it.
Finally, who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world's first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built.
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I applaud your enthusiasm and fully support your cause. There's no question that young women considering STEM careers need mentors and the more the merrier.
My only concern is for the standard by which we choose those mentors. Too much emphasis placed on extraordinary figures - those with firsts to their credits or histories of shattering glass ceilings - risks creating the false impression that what made these women extraordinary were the odds they had to overcome, which reinforces the stereotype of engineering and tech fields as inhospitable environments for women. Worse, it seems to support the tendency of measuring women entirely by traditionally male standards.
It's time we expanded our view of success to reflect tradtionally female values as well as male values and so broaden our mentor pool to include seemingly ordinary women who just happen to be engineers - those who successfully balance the pressures of career and family, for instance, or have to their credit any of a number of less celebrated accomplishments that tend to make life fulfilling for women.
Women are often differently motivated than men and their mentors need to reflect those differences.
So I take it that Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman aren't suitable role models?
"The objectification of women is bad enough when it's done by the media, but when it's done by a conference organiser or tech commentator or famous tech publication, what message does it send?"
I'll make a deal with you: you get women to stop seeing men as economic objects and then we can discuss the way men sexually visualize women.
On the confidence issue, women are themselves at least partially to blame because of their tendency to pick themselves apart at every turn (i.e., overthinking) anyway no matter how many men tell them how hot or smart or accomplished they are. Women's insecurities are then reinforced by the fashion and cosmetics industries and their collaborators on women's magazines, most of the staffs of which are comprised of...wait for it....women.
So I would say that first introspection among women is called for before you begin to lash out at men. Physician heal thyself, okay?
Nice idea but there is a lot of mythology in what has been written about Ada Lovelace (even the computer language named in her honour was a somewhat less that resounding success)
What about a Hypatia of Alexandria day. Little is know of Hypatia's life but her achievments are still important after 2000 years. She could use a good publicist.
"Always think for yourself. It is better to think and be wrong than not to think:- Hypatia.
http://greenteeth.blog.co.uk/2009/01/11/unemployed-graduate-become-a-mcprentice-5358958
First let me say there is never any justification for mistreating anyone, and certainly not on so superficial and automatic a basis as gender.
The most interesting thing about that finding, though, is it explains a lot of things that people certainly do not want to hear... in that, if any class of people is less likely to do a thing because others of their class have not done it, that is a self-fulfilling problem that explains why they have not succeeded at it, and indicates a poor potential for leadership and innovation.
Insofar as this phenomenon is socially conditioned, of course we can then attempt social reengineering to get rid of it... presuming we know how, and presuming there aren't negative, unintended side effects that are worse.
Presuming that it is innate, it is something we can do nothing about other than experimenting with eugenics. And if this is the case, rather than deploring the low rate of women doing this or that, we should simply accept that the genders have different inclinations, be grateful for the women who do these things well and honor them, but not pretend there is anything wrong with the women who do not, or with society for not engineering more gender equality into technology or whatever.
An inventor, innovator, leader who is dependent on having 'role models' to identify with is oxymoronic, the equivalent of airline food, military music, organized religion...
Roles and examples start early.
Next time there's a pre-teen girl with a birthday, what are you going to give her? A Bratz doll or a Technic Lego set? This is where the interest in technology gets started. They may stare at it for a while and wonder what it's for, but that is how boys get started on technology.
How about changing spark plugs and doing oil changes? Cutting things out of wood? Drilling holes and turning screws? Those all open the world of technology, tools, and materials. Unless that foundation gets started, the structure of a technical understanding and education is very difficult to achieve.
You're right about Admiral Hopper being the first programmer - and her first bug was a cockroach or something in a relay. Somewhere in my files I have a couple of her nanoseconds (about a foot of wire through which electricity traveled in a nanosecond) that she used to hand out at all her talks.
But this lady has started a website with another name - plus Lady Lovelace was certainly the inspiration and assistance to Babbage on his mechanical difference engine (computer). Surely she will feature Admiral Hopper prominently.
Happy new year!
I don't know who you're saying is right about Admiral Hopper being the first programmer, but anyway it's not clear that this is the case. Some sources say she was the first programmer of the Harvard Mark 1, but others say she was the third, or that she was one of the first. Also, she can be credited with many amazing achievements - she was the major contributor to the design of COBOL, for instance, but to focus primarily on her might create the impression that *few* of the early pioneers of computer science were women, and that this is what makes her remarkable.
The main article does Ada Lovelace a disservice when it states that she "was one of the world's first computer programmers". She was, almost without a doubt, THE first programmer ever.She is certainly the first one known to history. The Antikythera device is, as far as we can tell, the pinnacle of ancient mechanical ingenuity, and there's no evidence it could be programmed.
Also, the very first programmer of a general-purpose electronic computer (ENIAC) was a woman - Jean Bartik, also known as Elizabeth Jennings. The Mark 1 was electromechanical, but ENIAC was fully electronic. Most if not all of the other early programmers on the ENIAC were women, too. "Other early computer programmers on the ENIAC were: Frances Bilas Spence, Elizabeth Jennings, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, Kathleen McNulty, Elizabeth Snyder Holberton, and Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer". See http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/p/Jean_Bartik.htm
Suw, as a rule, I would sign up for this in a flash; however, you've made an error here and I cannot agree with you. Young woman and girls today need someone they can relate to and it isn't a woman of two hundred years ago. All of the high techs are riddled with brilliant women! Hells bells! Bill Gates even married one of them! You are correct in that women want to have other women as role models and your belief is borne out by the women at Microsoft who founded a club called the "Hoppers" in honor of Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. The "Hoppers" give scholarships each year to deserving women who want to study computer technology. You have a great idea but the wrong woman.
I'd hardly call Melinda Gates, inventor of Microsoft Bob (one of the biggest flops in Microsoft history), brilliant.
Melinda Gates graduated from Duke with her undergraduate degree in computer science, then went on to obtain her Master's degree in business. Microsoft, particularly in the early days, did not hire stupid people but only skimmed the cream from our major universities. Bill Gates, I believe, you would call brilliant and he has had his share of flops as well! You get nowhere if you can't fail once in awile! Melinda Gates is, indeed, brilliant, particularly with Encarta and Expedia.
I'm not familiar with the study cited here but it's no surprise that men don't even need to think about whether they need male role models in tech fields because they are surrounded by them all the time! Even in traditionally women's fields, like nursing or teaching, a male is showered with attention & admiration, not to mention promotions, for breaking the mold, whereas women in traditionally men's fields are often ostrecised for doing so.
It's so sad to me, & so grossly unfair that so little progress has been made regarding discrimination against women in tech as well as other fields traditionally dominated by men. Too much of America's brain power is being wasted by discriminatory attitudes and practices. People in teaching & training positions, both men & women, need to redouble their efforts to provide more supportive learning environments for young women, as well as to teach young men to reject the stance of entitlement that pressures them to close ranks & keep women out. It's wrong & there's no excuse for it.
Before you get all wound up I should say that you need more women in technology. They just are not there. The reasons for this, is of course, another issue. The fact remains that women do not go for the tech jobs to begin with. Are they closed out at the educational level. Do their parents and relatives keep them from such a choice by subtly moving them in a different direction. I don't know. It could be that tech is a testosterone thing and women in general do not have a need to do it so to speak. Being a professional tech person as well as a tech hobby person , I can assure you that in all my years I have seen very very very few women involved in the excitement of tech. This, to me is a disgusting state of affairs. but it seems women do not enjoy the hard stuff as opposed to the soft stuff, if you will. For instance; are there any electronic hobby women out there reading this post. If there are respond to it and tell me that your there because I think it is weird that most women are not interested in tech.
You hit on the exact reason women, in general, do not go into tech! Just you wait, though! For decades, women have been taught by women teachers and family that women should go into the arts, not the sciences. That is changing, thank heaven. My 22 year old niece took the hardest science and math courses offered at Dartmouth and graduated the head of her class. She's now going into medical school, with the hope of becoming a neuro-scientist. (Nothing soft about that!) She was one of many women in her class who chose the hard stuff over the pap. Father's need to encourage daughters. The fossils in our universities need to make room for the women who choose to study the hard stuff! Most importantly, we need to change the way we teach the sciences in our schools and have more emphasis on inclusion of the sexes.
I don't quite know what you mean by an electronic hobby but this computer nerd from the '70s never stops finding new ways to use the things!
I think you should do your historical homework and pick a better heroine for your "day." Ada was the daughter of Lord Byron. She was indeed a brilliant woman, but she also joined her mother in persecuting Byron's half sister Augusta (purportedly his lover) , joining such Victorian busy-body prudes as Harriet Beecher Stowe in attacking the memory of her father. Surely there is a woman pioneer in technology who was not also a blue-stocking scold.
I agree wholeheartedly! I'd like to nominate Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper! Although she passed away in 1992, she had a profound influence on my life and the lives of many today. She was on the team which developed ENIAC and she wrote and developed COBOL! When I worked for NASA in the '70s, I needed to learn COBOL and the nerd herd of males looked at me like I'd fallen off a tree limb. I figured if a woman designed it, a woman could learn it and I did! "Amazing Grace" even had a ship in our Navy named after her, one of the few ever named after a woman! The women at Microsoft formed a club calling themselves "Hoppers" and they give scholarships in her name to other women. She would be the ideal candidate for any woman (or man) to use as a role model. Google her and you will be an instant admirer!
Yes, Admiral Hopper had a destroyer named after her. She was one cool engineer. However, the sailors on that ship, when asked where they are serving have to reply "I'm on the Hopper". Most inappropriate.
Seriously, though, where I work the person in charge of the design engineering staff (roughly 550 engineers) is a woman. Who reports to a woman. Progress is being made, albeit incrementally.
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