Where Have the Women of Tech History Gone?

Hi everyone and welcome to my talk about the women in the history of computer science. So first of all, my name is Laura Durieux, aka devgirloninternet. I'm a full-stack web developer. I won some medals some years ago. I'm a streamer on Twitch and I'm also the show presenter on RTBFxP, which is the public national media of Belgium. If you want to follow me on social media, don't hesitate. But this is the most tricky and technical part of the talk, of course. So on Twitch and YouTube, this is devgirl with one underscore. On Twitter, this is two underscore. And on Instagram, there are three underscores. I did my best. Please don't judge me. I did my best.

So once upon a time. So first of all, I want to tell you about a little anecdote that happened when I was in college and which was the trigger of my journey learning about the women who had revolutionized the computer science field. I had an art history class during my first year and I was really sad that there were a maximum two women presented. So I decided to send an email to my teacher and ask him why he presented so few women in his syllabus. And he answered honestly and kindly that he didn't have enough time to add more artists in his syllabus. And some students may not have the basis for their career. So we think about students who will continue in illustration, painting, animation, etc. So at first, I didn't pay attention to it because I didn't realize the huge problem that was behind this message. But when I realized it, I started to ask myself some questions. And today I wanted to share two of them with you. The first one is why are women not considered as a required basis? And why do they have less than men? The second one is who is the person or the group of person who decides what someone deserves more than another to be in a syllabus? So spoiler alert, I can't answer these questions right now. I mean, I'm not a sociologist, I'm not a philosophist. I don't have the basic knowledge. I don't have the knowledge right now. So it doesn't make sense. But what I can do is to pay tribute or give a place to women who deserve it and have done such fantastic work. So this problem is present in many fields. But we are only going to talk about computer science, of course, a reason of your presence today.

So personally, if you go home today, so maybe after the talk, you remember two names of women. This is already a big win. So normally I ask if you do know any women in computer science. And if you do, don't hesitate, if there are some comments section or anything, don't hesitate to put them before continuing the talk. Well, let's go and discover the stories together. And for that, we need to go back in time. And we are going to begin with the Age of Enlightenment.

The ancestor of computer computing machines were computers and human computers, and especially in astronomy field, so basically computer was a job and it was mathematical calculations. And very often they were separated into groups to compute long and difficult calculations. The work was divided in a way that the calculations were executed at the same time in parallel. Like every profession, it was dominated by the men, however, the first woman to be quoted. However, the first woman to be quoted in articles about computer science history is Nicole Leporte, who is one of the most famous astronomers of the Age of Enlightenment. With two other men, she calculated the return date of Halley's Comets for April 13 in 1759, almost exactly as it returned on March 13 in the same year. Maria Mitchell also made a splash for discovering the first telescopic comet, which means it's invisible for the naked eye. The comet is named after her and she will receive a gold medal for her achievement.

During the 19th century, there were quite a few barriers and contradictions regarding women in scientific profession, despite the fact that they had access to degrees, they were forced to resign as soon as they get married, without saying that at the time, a woman that is not married doesn't exist in the eyes of society. So, the history of computer science begins in 1840 with a woman that you obviously know, and if you don't, you should ask yourself some serious questions. Of course, it's Ada Lovelace. However, I don't see Ada only as the first programmer. Let me explain myself. So Charles Barbage is the man who built a different engine and the analytical engine whose purpose was to calculate in place of humans. However, he was very messy and couldn't stand back from his machine he was building. He has extraordinary ideas, but not a concept that embraced his machine. Hence the arrival of our dear and sweet Ada Lovelace. She invented the concept behind the analytical engine by providing the first algorithms, the beginning of computer science. So Ada isn't just the first programmer for me, she's the mother of computer science. And by the way, you can find the first concept of functions and loops in her algorithms. Just that. But despite this extraordinary invention, it was far too innovative for this time and the analytical engine was forgotten for lack of funding and was found back in 1987 to inspire the Mark I, the first general purpose electromechanical computer.

But despite this extraordinary invention, it was far too innovative for this time and the analytical engine was forgotten for lack of funding and was found back in 1987 to inspire the Mark I, the first general purpose electromechanical computer.

But let's take it easy. We are at the end of the 19th century and Edward Charles Pickering is the founder of the group of women known as the Harvard Computers. These women listed over one hundred, sorry, these women listed over 10,000 stars and developed a system to describe them. One woman in particular stood out, Amy Tom Cannon. She pioneered a new spectral type classification system and developed the Harvard classification scheme, which is still the basis of the system used today. Between 1911 and 1915, she will classify some 5000 stars a month at a rate of three stars per minute. This is huge.

In the 19th century, the growth of industries opened up opportunities for women to join the field of technology. One notable woman, Gritz Erman, made significant contribution with her advanced work in mathematics and physics. She played a key role in her early philosophical work on the foundations of quantum mechanics. In the 1920s, her doctoral thesis laid the groundwork for computer algebra and it first established the existence of algorithms for many of the basic problems of abstract algebra. Between the 1940s and the 1970s, women were widely hired as coders for many reasons. The first one was that during this period, programming was an emerging field, lacking professionalization with no specific coding diploma requirements. This lack of formal credentials was advantageous for women as new hires only needed to pass a straightforward logic test without the need of a diploma. Another contribution factor was that despite women earning degrees in scientific profession from university, they face challenges like finding jobs or even advancing in their career. As a result, many women decided to turn to opportunities in IT. The third factor was the shortage of manpower and the fact that women cost very little, sometimes less than a worker. In 1941, during World War II, Grace Hooper, a 36 years old mathematician, decided to contribute to her country.

She left her teaching position at the Vassar College and joined the U.S. Navy with the expectation of decoding enemy messages. Surprisingly, the Navy decided to send her to Harvard, where she became the third programmer of the first computer, the renowned Mark I, designed to solve ballistic problems. So earlier, I mentioned the analytical engine and how it was rediscovered at Harvard, inspiring Howard Aiken to create the Mark I in 1937. The Mark I was a versatile punch card programmable calculator and it was Grace who had the honor or rather the heavy burden of taming this machine. She wrote his 521 pages user manual from scratch. She engaged in top secret calculations crucial to the war effort involving tasks like programming, like determining, sorry, rocket trajectories, generating range table and for new anti-aircraft and craft. This is really hard to pronounce it for me. New anti-aircraft guns and calibrating minesweepers. The year 1940 marks a milestone in the history of computing. The first fully electronic computer, the ENIAC.

It was developed to automate and speed up the work of calculator. And while the latter was indeed faster, it still needed a human intervention. The operator and this job was largely performed by women. The operator is a person who will manually enter the question into the electronic computer using switches and cables.

Six astounding women. Kathleen McNulty-Antonelli, Marlene Westcuff-Melzer, Betty Jean Jennings, Frances Spence, Betty Halburton and Ruth Tatel-Bone was the programmer of the ENIAC. So amongst the first programmer by extension. Although the role of operator was the programmers of the day, it received little credits or was easily belittled as it was mostly practiced by women. Hardware being considered as the men's job. Yet the line between these two professions was not necessarily clear cut. Often women needed to have little or in-depth knowledge of hardware to be able to do their job. And this is where we see a big difference between the job description and what these women were actually had to do.

So I have little anecdotes. So all these women had a mathematics degree in common. They were responsible for installing and assembling the ENIAC. So you see the line between hardware, software and they were the ancestors of the debugger. They invented the concept of debugging. In 1942, a significant innovation emerged and intentionally driven by Hidela Mar, a renowned movie star. To understand this, let's rewind a bit and delve into her background. Hidela Mar is famous for her role in the first non-pornographic film featuring a nude orgasm scene and also recognized as the face of Disney's animated film Snow White, found herself in an unexpected role. Facing a troubled marriage, Lamar fled to the United States Facing a troubled marriage, Lamar fled to Austria. However, she had a surprising alter ego, her profound interest in technology and advancement from war. During this time, so during her time in America, she crossed paths with a pianist, George Entail, and together they conceived a secret communication system for launching radio control torpedoes known as the frequency, the frequency, sorry, known as the Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum or FHSS. They patented this idea in 1942 and remarkably is still used today for technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

And when it comes to unusual carrier changes, I think that we are reaching new heights. At the same time, a new way of thinking code emerged in the 50s. Challenges arose from hardware constraints. So programming was evolving faster than hardware. And I think that this is still the case today. So algorithms had to be optimized, giving rise to the image of a singular creative genius wielding a form of black magic.

And it was at this point that the stereotypical image of the white, hairy, antisocial man emerged. And although it is it belonged more to the realm of fantasy, studies in the 60s showed that and that it quick, he quickly became a sought after profile and was more easily hired by companies. And you thought we were done speaking about Grace Hopper? No, but she's back. And after the war, she worked on the UNIVAC, the most powerful computer in the world at that time, when she was put in charge of the automatic programming department. She kept she came up with the idea of the compiler, enabling computers to write their own programs. As revolutionary as the idea was, she observed that it was long before. It wasn't long before every company started writing their own compilers. So in 1959, faced with the potential chaos of every computer brand having its own computer compiler, she decided to call on her own Navy connection to organize a meeting with every computer manufacturer in the country. When they all came out, they all agreed that a simple, universal language would be used by all computers. And soon, the common business oriented language or COBOL was born and is still in use today. Little anecdote, it was also Grace who came up with the idea of software portability. So instead of having to rewrite every program on every computer, the code is compiled so that it can be reused on any other computers. Secondly, Grace decided to call the process of writing instruction coding, and it is funny to know that this term replaced by programming has recently been revived.

So take a look at this graph. It shows several curves representing the number of female graduates in various fields. And I think that we can observe something strange about the way in computer science. In 1980, we saw a break between women and computing. And there are several reasons for this, a lot of reasons for it. But today I want to talk about only one reason that I think is kind of a good reflection about what I'm talking about today.

A significant factor contributing to the gender gap in computing studies was the advent of personal computer or PC in 1981. Before this, most university students had little to no exposure to computers as they were rare and expensive, putting everyone in a relatively equal footing. However, when the introduction of the PC, a new stereotype emerged. The perception arose that to be a proficient programmer, one had to spend countless hours obsessively working on a computer, leading to the notion of the real programmer who sported a computer screen ten from constant screen time. And the funny thing is, many in the business didn't even fit the stereotype.

Moreover, when households acquired a computer, it often ended up in the boys' room with the father taking on the role of coach, encouraging their sons to explore programming. A gap was then created. And the thing is, it's especially the advertisement that showed only boys and men in front of the computer. And when it was women, it was the mother on the side of the computer or really sexy women behind the computer. But the woman was almost never in front of the computer. These days, we hear about GPT and artificial intelligence every single day. During my research, I discovered several women who have advanced the field of artificial intelligence, including Alice Hoekhoek and Karen Spike Jones, scientist and researcher in computer science. Karen Spike Jones' work focuses on automatic and natural language processing and information retrieval. She developed the TF-IDF method, a weighted relevance measure that is still used today by most search engines. Working with Margaret Mastermind, she set herself the goal of programming a computer to understand words with multiple meanings and set about coding a dictionary of synonyms. Her ideas, little appreciated at the outset, are implemented today and continue to inspire.

During my research, I discovered several women who have advanced the field of artificial intelligence, including Alice Hoekhoek and Karen Spike Jones, scientist and researcher in computer science. Karen Spike Jones work focuses on automatic and natural language processing and information retrieval. She developed the TF-IDF method, so time frequency, inverse document frequency, a weighted relevance measure that is still used today by most search engines and and is an important tool for SEO. This method combines the physical presence of a word in a text with the weight of its importance in general. It does makes it possible to define the relevance of a specific keyword in a text. Working with Margaret Mastermind, she set herself the goal of programming a computer to understand words with multiple meanings and set about coding a dictionary of synonyms. She published an article in 1964 that is considered a founding and fundamental document in the field of natural language processing. Her ideas, little appreciated at the outset, are implemented today and continue to inspire. She also mentored a generation of researchers, both men and women, and coined the slogan computing. The slogan computing is so important to be left to men. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, queen.

And I also discovered something extremely interesting, no sexism in hacker ethics. I mean, like the philosophy of the hackers spirit demands that only the work of hackers be judged, not the hackers themselves. So age, social position, gender, sexual orientation, color of the skin, ethical origin, ethnic, sorry, ethnic origins should not be taken into account.

And this is also why the big challenge for the tech woman will not be longer to be labeled as a woman to be defended, but as an expert. And that's all.

So is it true? I had the misfortune of typing most female, most famous female hackers into Google and was pleased to come across a majority of links, making like top 10 hottest female hackers. And this is in French. And this is really funny because the title is translated from English, but like really in a literal, literal way that makes the title in French makes no sense. So it makes this image way more funnier, way more funny.

So even if there is a progressive will in this field, the fantasy of female hackers is still very present. The woman I would like to highlight is Joanna Rutkowska, a Polish computer science and security expert. And she best known for her research into low level security and root kits.

So someone in my previous talks said to me, like, oh, but, you know, Joanna Rutkowska, I know her. And she's she really don't have a she had a really bad temper, a really bad personality. And I was like, you know, when he was talking to me about that, I directly start about Steve Jobs. I mean, like Steve Jobs is also a really bad person. But everybody is like, right, it praises him all the time. He has movies, he has books.

So I mean, like I still presented presenting her, but I wanted to add more women in the cybersecurity field. So Melanie Rieback from the United States and Patti Maas from Belgium, from my country. So, yeah, if you want to know more about her, you have their names and you can check online, of course.

So I can go on for hours and hours about these women, and today many actions and associations are being set up to give a place and a voice for women in Haiti, and this conference is one of them. And to be honest, I didn't have the time. And I discover so much women through the time and all the time, like the woman who invented the protocol at the beginning, who let the WWW existing as a woman, the person who invited the AARM architecture is a woman, the person who invited the assembly languages is a woman. So, yeah, I can go on and on for hours.

And this talk has a goal, precise goal is to show the importance of role model. And all these women that I presented can be role models. And I wanted to quickly present my role model, who is Aurélie Jean, which is, I never know how, I never retain the way to describe her job. I always say that she's a physicist, a numerical physicist. And so she is a physician and she works, she works with algorithms and artificial intelligence.

So she's really inspiring. And I had the chance to meet her and to get to know her. And I'm really happy about that. And I really recommend you to read her books. So.

The aim of this conference is to highlight women who have changed the course of IT history and who can inspire young girls today. I ask you, with those who have patiently listened to their story, when you go home, no, I mean, like when this is the end of this talk, of this video, to write down at least two names you discovered today and spread the word. To share the stories of these women with your daughters, your students, your friends, your sister, your mother. I mean, like you have I'm sure you have a lot of women around you. And of course, encourage them to share, to show these women. These girls don't have to become programmers, but just open up the horizon and show that being a girl doesn't have to limit their choices and their dream.

So narrate and create and propagate. Thank you so much. Thank you, React Summit US. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, everybody, to listen to me. And I hope that I could inspire some people, some persons, some women, or encourage some men to show these women. I hope it was really interesting for you and I hope you're going to have a great day. See you soon. Bye bye.