Ada Lovelace Day - are you ready?

[motodraconis]

March 24 is Ada Lovelace Day!

Who was Ada? (Taken from Findingada.com)
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. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.



Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

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 they do. 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 join in go to Findingada.com

More information at 2D Goggles.

Comments

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Well I've worked all my life in male-dominated jobs. The only person I could name from my background for Lovelace day happens to be trans and built the bulk of their experience in their field as a male person, so I'm not sure they count for this example as such.
I personally would like a reminder that the "other" gender exists beyond vague mentions from co-workers of their stay at home wife and primary carer of their children.

[shermarama]

*shrugs* Perhaps I'm in different bits of science & technology. There's never been as many women around as there are men, but there are always some and I don't think I've ever felt that the women I've worked with have been unrecognised or unacknowledged. It just doesn't feel like it's been an issue in any of the places I've worked - the only time considerations like this come up, for me, is when I see campaigns like this telling me I've been repressed.

And what does a campaign like this tell people on the outside - that we need a special day to remind us that people with tits are allowed to do this too? What's the aim here, to go looking for specific cases of women who have been under-represented so we can whinge about it, rather than, e.g., looking at the contributions of all the other female scientists whose work is recognised just like anyone else's? Kind of unconstructive. I'd rather, you know, go and do some interesting research.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Well for me, I'm actually genuinely interested. I'd never heard of Ada Lovelace until I read about her from the publicity from the last Lovelace day, I had no idea that she wrote the first computer program.

I didn't know, because no one thought to tell me, and I never thought to ask because I was brought up surrounded by entirely male role models and no female ones, to the point that I spent all of my childhood bitterly regretting that I had not been born a boy, because it seemed to me that boys got to do cool things, but girls did not.

I'd love to hear about more examples, even if I could have done with them long ago as a child, and the thing is, I don't get to hear of them except through days like this.

I'm glad you have never felt "repressed" but I can name too many examples of my daily work life where people who did not know me or the quality of my work told me to my face that I was rubbish at my job because I was female. It was an atitude ingrained in my workplaces, and it would take too bloody long to go into it now. Demoralising too, as some of these people were in the position of selecting for job interviews. They didn't have to see my portfolio, I was female and thus I was "rubbish" and not worth bothering with.

However, the best I can say in brief is that my trans friend noticed the change in atitude to her when she became fully realised as a female. As a female, (and a female with vast experience and skill in her field) she was suddenly considered to be "shit" at her job by her co-workers (those unaware of her past.) It was a tangible change in atitude, and this in spite of the fact that her personality/skills were unchanged by her transition. (I say this, because there were times when I wondered if it was just me, or my personality, but in truth, there is a reason there are so few women in the fields I worked in, and the ones that were in these fields had to be abnormally self-confident and work twice as hard to compensate for the "you woman - you shit" atitude that we had to put up with daily, the rest were driven away.)

So basically, I certainly appreciate days like this, and no one has to tell me I'm repressed, I already know I've been at a disadvantage for the majority of my life just by being female, and it pisses me off as much now as it did as a child being told "you can't do that, it's not right/abnormal/you don't have the brainpower etc, you're a girl. Girls don't do that! Name an example of a woman doing that!" And of course, I never could.

[wisemanharris.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in this website (http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/)

We do need stuff like this, or we are in danger of going backwards.

[wuggy.livejournal.com]

"Girls don't do that! Name an example of a woman doing that!" And of course, I never could.

Damn, and there's some absolute whopper examples. A few from memory:

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. (Probably THE example of a woman pioneer in ANY field.)

Frances E Allen and Barbara Liskov have both won the ACM's Turing Award.

The ENIAC programmers. Virtually all programming was done by the 6 lady programmers. My poor addled brain doesn't remember all their names, unfortunately.

Dame Wendy Hall is the current president of the ACM. She's also a Fellow of the Royal Society.

I'm sure wikipedia knows more than my battered brain does. There's no shortage of female computing pioneers, historic and modern.