Barriers
As stated above, a variety of factors play in to women’s desire to leave computer science in college or to never join in the first place. Sexism within computer science departments or in the workplace discourages women to continue the study. It can occur both explicitly and implicitly, with examples being remarks such as “women aren’t as technically proficient as males” or, as female graduate students and research staff in the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT found, simply talking to male colleagues about computer science can be consider “being interested” in them which can harm their professionalism and limit women from fully reaching their potential.
Additionally, women in computer science departments sometimes feel “outdone” by male students who have more experience- even though they are not necessarily brighter. As Jane Mangolis et al called it, “Living Among the ‘Programming Gods.'” Without strong role models, women begin to question if they can actually succeed in computer science or if it is right for them, as so many other students have more experience and are “better.” To further push this, boys are often exposed to computers before girls, making the gap in experience even larger. Finally, to speak about the mentors, the multitude of male professors in comparison to female professors indicates a lack of role models; women don’t necessarily see other women at the top of the field, which is a real problem- Stanford even has a whole page from a project on the lack of female CS faculty!
As an example of the lack of female professors in computing, these are the top results from the DPLA with the search “computer science faculty”
Grace Hopper
Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994
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Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994
Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994
Array
Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994
Grace Hopper earned her PhD in mathematics from Yale in 1934, a rare accomplishment at the time. She had been an instructor at Vassar College from 1928 until 1943 when she left her post as associate professor to join the Naval Reserve. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard, working with the Mark series of computers. She was the third person to program the Mark I and was given the Naval Ordnance Development Award for her success with programming the Mark I, II, and III computers.
Hopper saw how computation could be extended to many people if the tools were available. To follow this dream of expanding who can program, she joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and began work on UNIVAC I. While at this project she (now an Admiral) tried to get fellow programmers to become more efficient by sharing code. She then developed the first compiler, the A-O, which turned mathematical symbols into machine code and had the computer do the difficult work without explicit instruction. This was a big step towards the user friendly tools, or programming languages.
Following the first compiler came FLOW-MATIC, a compiler for business tools such as billing. FLOW-MATIC lended much of its design to the famous COBOL language, which she developed manuals and tools for. She also helped design programs for validating the correctness of COBOL compilers. Program correctness is today one of the most important features of software design: you’d rather know your airplane is going to have its software die midflight before it goes up when you can still fix mistakes than when it is over the Atlantic. As part of her lasting legacy she has an award within the ACM given annually to an individual for a single large technical contribution named the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.
Hopper gave many speeches and loved to use analogies to help others understand; one of these is her famous nanosecond analogy:
And a couple of her nanoseconds as well as her badge from her time at Harvard and a Navy Specialist patch of hers:
The ENIAC Machine
U.S. Information Agency. (8/1/1953 - 4/1/1978)
U.S. Information Agency. (8/1/1953 - 4/1/1978)
Ida Rhodes
Rhodes was a mathematician who earned both a BS and MS from Cornell in 1923. She joined the Mathematical Tables Project in 1940, which calculated values of various functions and then published them as (very large) tables. Rhodes was a supervisor and planner of the Handbook of Mathematical Functions during this time. In 1947 she moved to the National Bureau of Standards to work on developing the electronic computer. Rhodes worked in the Machine Development Lab and later moved into consulting for the National Applied Mathematics Laboratories.
During this time she also pioneered systems of programming analysis, designing the C-10 language for the UNIVAC I as well as writing the original program used by the Social Security Administration. In 1949 she was given the Exceptional Service Gold Medal for “significant pioneering leadership and outstanding contributions to the scientific progress of the nation in the functional design and application of electronic digital computing equipment.” Although retiring from the NBS in 1964 she remained a consultant until 1971.
In addition to her many technological achievements, Rhodes was also known for helping government and private agencies understand how computing could make their lives easier and their work faster. She also taught coding classes for the handicapped and lectured in general about computers and computing.
Jean Sammet
Source: http://history.computer.org/pioneers/sammet.html