This March has been Women’s History Month, which also included International Women’s Day on the 8th March. In line with this, the hashtag #WomenInTech has been featuring on social media and that got us thinking.
Almost half of our staff at Fifteen are women, within a variety of departments including digital marketing, design and account management. We got together to think about how women have shaped the technological industry through the ages.
In 2016, it was recorded that women hold just 26% of all tech jobs. With the technology industry, still being dominated by men, women are coming through the ranks and showing that they are just as worthy.
A Quick History of Women in Technology
1842 – What is now considered the first algorithm was written by Ada Lovelace, which allowed a machine to manipulate data like never before. She is now thought to be on of the first female computer programmers.
1926 – The foundational paper for computerised algebra was publish by Grete Hermann, a German mathematician and philosopher. Much of her work also had a strong influence in quantum mechanics.
1943 – During World War 2, many women became involved in programming and computing. It is known that a group of women worked on the Colossus operators and these allowed Allies to receive military intelligence through radiotelegraphy.
1944 – Grace Hopper, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama just last year, was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark 1 computer. She also invented the first compiler computer programming language, which transforms source code into another computer language.
1956 – From 1956 – 1960, Evelyn Boyd Granville worked on Project Vanguard and Project Mercury space programs after receiving her PHD in mathematics in 1949. Much of her work involved developing new computer procedures for the space programs.
1962 – FORMAC programming language was made by Jean E. Sammet. She later became the first female president of the Association for Computing Machinery in the 1970’s.
1969 – The Apollo space program had an onboard flight software that was developed my Margaret Hamilton.
1984 – The icons and elements we have known to love from the original Apple Macintosh were created by Susan Kare.
1999 – A year after Google’s launch, they took on their first female engineer, Marissa Mayer. She is now currently the president and chief executive of the search engine, Yahoo.
2005 – In 2005, The Huffington Post was founded by author, columnist and businesswoman, Arianna Huffington. In 2009, she was then listed as one of the ‘Most Influential Women In Media’ by Forbes.
2014 – Susan Wojcicki, American technology executive, initially worked for Google. However, in 2014 she became the CEO of YouTube after handling the acquisition of the two sites in 2006.
The Future – How amazing would it be if one of our very own Fifteen ladies became a part of technological history? Keep an eye out, you never know!
The Fifteen Ladies
If you want to find out more about our women in technology and what they get up to at Fifteen, you can check out their team’s pages below.
Kate – Client Services Director
Julie – Financial Director
Sophie – Senior Digital Producer
Lucy – Designer
India – Digital Marketing Strategist
Abbie – Digital Marketing Assistant
If you’re a woman in technology and want to join our team. We have a whole host of career opportunities at Fifteen, within our digital marketing, web development and designer teams.
Join our fast-paced office environment and like-minded team, by checking out our exciting opportunities on our careers page.