For a very long time, women have been subjected to prejudices that kept on dallying their personal empowerment. For ages, the patriarchy had tried to confine their progress, and bottle up their free will, their ability to create, and their ability to grow.
But despite all the limitations, women have always been able to emerge gloriously, especially in the field of technology. It is true and evident that as a society we have been inclining towards male dominance. It doesn’t matter how harsh it may sound, but that is the bitter reality that we all need to face.
But the important question is…
Were the walls of age-old sexism able to hold back the evolution of women?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
Let Us Start Our Women-Pro Tech Talk
The fact that women have always outshined men in the field of technology is setting an example for the entire world.
Did you know that the world’s first programmers were not men?
Did you know that the world’s first computer wasn’t a machine?
They were women. Strong, independent and intelligent women, who knew the importance of shattering stereotypical conceptions. Do you remember Ada Lovelace, the first programmer? She is the reason behind the transformed approach towards computers and programming. With a holiday and award in her name, she was able to set an example for the generations to come.
Remember the human-computer we were talking about? Well, Katherine Johnson was famously known as the NASA computer. And she was the reason behind creating the flight paths of America’s initial space expeditions.
Women in early times, found solace with technology, as it helped them to expand their horizons. They were able to hit the bull’s eye and create their own space in the male-dominated society with the help of technology. It actually acted as a platform, that helped them to voice their opinions and make their presence felt.
Women through their ideas inspired some of the greatest minds. Take Adele Goldberg for example. She was the woman who inspired Steve Jobs. An only female researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center- PARC. Her team build the Smalltalk-80 programming language and created the infrastructure/ design for overlapping windows. Yes, we are talking about the graphical user interface. She is the reason why the Apple desktop environment looks the way it does.
The more you think about the reach of women in technology, the more you’ll come across examples who were the reason behind some of the greatest inventions, like Karen Spärck Jones. Googling would actually have been an unknown concept if it was not for her. She was a British computer scientist who designed the concept of inverse document frequency.
This concept was the driving fuel behind the invention of popular search engines. When she worked in a Language Research Unit of Cambridge, she was selected by another headstrong female professor Margaret Masterman. Later she paved her way into the use of thesauri for language processing. She basically laid and strengthen the foundation of the process of information retrieval.
You can easily find a glut of examples over Google narrating their stories and their achievements. But an important thing to notice is the potential in them that enhances the future of technology. But hold your wits because that is not all, there is more to come.
So stay tuned to this space and find out more about the ways in which women are conquering the world.
Author Bio: Harjot Kaur is a Business Head at Techugo– a mobile app development company, spending her day with her selling and convincing skills, helping in converting leads, and closing customers. She is a technology graduate and when she is not busy in her usual business talks, she explores new technologies and shares her knowledge through writing.