Happy Women's History Month!

@ArabellaScott
Check this out: article from 2013!

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/131008-women-handprints-oldest-neolithic-cave-art#

Yes, there are stupendous amounts of us. And women are well represented in arts, tech and innovation throughout History - just not well recorded!

I studied this for my bachelor, and if I ever get around to do my masters I’ll adress this for sure 😃

She was right.

The minute men got their hands on it the internet was flooded with porn and stupid violent games.

That is actually bliddy terrifying @turbonerd ! 😧

It'll be standing room only before long.

Katherine Johnson is amazing.
Also women artists and painters - hugely undervalued and amazingly talented!

@Emotionalsupportviper Google World Population Growth graphs and be amazed!

Karen Sparck-Jones also said "computing is too important to be left to men."

Another IT pioneer - Stephanie (Steve) Shirley

https://www.steveshirley.com/story/
Dame Stephanie’s story has many strands which, woven together by her courage, determination and resilience, have produced a lifetime of exceptional achievements. In recognition of these she was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2017, a membership limited to only 65 individuals globally, for her services to the IT industry and philanthropy.A child refugee who at five years old came to England without her parents, Dame Stephanie went on to found an all-woman software company that pioneered remote working and redefined the expectations and opportunities for working women at that time. It was ultimately valued at almost $3 billion and made 70 of her staff millionaires. Since ‘retiring’ her work has been in philanthropy, with a particular focus on autism and IT.
Dame Stephanie Shirley CH was born Vera Buchthal in Dortmund, Germany. She was just five years old in 1939 when, clutching the hand of her nine-year-old sister Renate, she said goodbye to her mother and boarded the Kindertransport from Vienna to London. This particular train was carrying around 1,000 of the 10,000 child refugees that were ultimately evacuated from unthinkable danger. Like so many of those children, Vera and Renate didn’t know if they would ever see their parents again.The sisters were raised in the West Midlands by loving foster parents, and although Vera did have contact with her mother and father from time to time, their relationship had been put under impossible strain and never fully recovered. Understandably, this wrenching separation and relocation was life defining for Vera, and equipped her with fortitude at a very young age.
By the early 1960s, now a British citizen and married with a new name, Stephanie Shirley was becoming frustrated with the low expectations, inequality and sexism that women faced in the workplace. She decided to start her own company, selling software. It was called Freelance Programmers, and it was staffed by women working from home, blazing a trail for flexible working practices for women with caring responsibilities. 297 of the first 300 staff were women. At the time, when a woman couldn’t open a bank account without her husband’s permission, this idea was truly revolutionary.Sadly, the industry was not so forward-thinking, and people either laughed at the idea or were openly hostile. Many of Stephanie’s business development letters were simply ignored. At her dear husband Derek’s suggestion, Stephanie began signing her letters using the family nickname Steve, and was able to get a foot in the door before anyone realised that he was a she. Over the decades to follow the business flourished, and Dame Stephanie has been known as Steve ever since.

The Women Who Changed The Tech World

10 women who changed the world

1. Ada Lovelace: The World's First Computer Programmer

Ada was the daughter of romantic poet, Lord Byron, and his wife, Anna Isabella-Byron. Her mathematical talent shone through in her early life, and her skills and interest in machines lead to a working relationship with Charles Babbage. Babbage was the inventor of the “Analytical Engine”, a complicated device that was never actually created, but resembled the elements of a modern computer. As a result of her work on the project, Ada is often referred to as the “world’s first computer programmer”. It was Lovelace's notes on the Analytical Engine that Alan Turing used as a form of inspiration for his work on the first modern computer in the 1940s.

1. Grace Hopper: The Esteemed Computer Scientist

Undeniably famous in the tech world, Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper was an esteemed computer scientist and one of the first computer programmers to work on the Harvard Mark I. Her work led to the development of COBOL, an early programming language we is still used to this day. In 1947, she recorded the worlds first ever real computer bug, and it is also said that she coined the phrase: “it is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

1. Hedy Lamarr: The Inventor of WiFi

Hedy was a self-taught inventor and film actress, who was awarded a patent in 1942 for her "secret communication system", designed with the help of the composer George Antheil. This frequency hopping system was intended as a way to set radio-guided torpedos off course during the war, but the idea eventually inspired Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth technology commonly used today.

1. Annie Easley: The NASA Rocket Scientist

Annie was a NASA rocket scientist, and a trailblazer for gender and racial diversity in STEM. When hired, she was one of only four black employees at the Lab. 34 years later, she had contributed to numerous programs as a computer scientist, inspired many through her enthusiastic participation in outreach programs, and broken down barriers as equal employment opportunity counsellor. Easley's vital work on the Centaur rocket project while at NASA laid the foundations for space shuttle launches in the future.

1. Mary Wilkes: The First Home Computer User

Mary is a former computer programmer and logic designer. She is best known for designing the software for the LINC, one of the earliest systems of an interactive personal computer. Her use of the LINC at home in 1965 made her the first ever home computer user, and her work has been recognised at The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park.

1. Adele Goldberg: The Inspiration For GUI

Adele was instrumental in the development of the programming language Smalltalk-80, which inspired the very first Apple computer. Adele is said to have referred to the decision to show Steve Jobs Smalltalk as a way to “give away the kitchen sink”. She was probably right! The concepts that Adele and her team set in motion became the basis for graphical user interfaces (GUI) we use every day.

1. Radia Perlman: The Mother Of The Internet

Nicknamed “Mother of the Internet”, Radia’s invention of the algorithm behind the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), was instrumental in making today's internet possible. Her work made a huge impact on the way networks self-organize and move data, and put the basic rules of internet traffic in place. Radia has delivered keynote speeches across the world, and is still a computer programmer and engineer for Dell EMC.

1. Katherine Johnson: The NASA Mathematician

Katherine’s trajectory analysis as a mathematician for NASA was crucial to the success of the first ever US space flight. Her complex manual calculations were also critical in future space missions, including the first American in orbit, John Glenn. Katherine ran the numbers programmed into the computer at NASA for the flight by hand, at the request of Glenn. Katherine remembers him saying “if she says they’re good... “then I’m ready to go.” At age 97, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour, by President Obama.

1. Karen Sparck-Jones: The Pioneer in Information Science

Karen was a pioneer in information science, and her work is some of the most highly cited in her field. Her development of Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), a weighting factor which evaluates how important a word is to a document, is now standard in web search engines and used to rank a document’s relevance to a search query. She received the highly acclaimed Lovelace Medal in 2007!

10. Elizabeth Feinler: The Original Search Engine

Between 1972 to 1989, Elizabeth ran the Network Information Center in California, which was a bit like a “pre-historic Google.” The NIC was the first place to publish the resources and directories for the Internet, developing the original "white pages" and “yellow pages” directories. Her group also developed the domain naming scheme of .com, .edu, .gov, .net, and many more that we use so commonly today.

Another artist who I'd not heard of before this Twitter thread:

Zinaida Serebriakova, a remarkable artist with a remarkable life involving both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, Paris, and personal tragedy.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1751370825599463754.html

Here are some names for you:

• Ada Lovelace
• Grace Hopper
• The ENIAC women
• Hedy Lamarr
• Stephanie Shirley
• Karen Spärck-Jones
• Radia Perlmann
• Wendy Hall

Don't forget around 75% of the Bletchley Park employees were women, too.

Thanks. I'm going to have a dig around the hidden women in IT.

Women's History Month has been around for some years, for those of us who worked in US companies. HR wouldn't let me do a presentation on equal pay round the world for the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, though. We did run a daily series one year, on women pioneers in IT (forget Turing, Gates, etc - the history of computing is packed with women and then men realised they could make money with it.) We did a showing Hidden Figures another year, too.

The Herring Lasses

Herring girls (or herring lasses) were groups of women who would travel the east coast of the United Kingdom from as far north as Aberdeen to as far south as Great Yarmouth, following herring as they migrated throughout the year.

Herring, sometimes called silver darlings‚ are a small fish that were caught in huge numbers in the North Sea from the eighteenth century right up until the mid twentieth century. Over the course of the year, the herring migrated to new breeding grounds, so the best place to sail from to catch them would change depending on the time of year ‚ from Scotland and northern England in Spring down to the coast of East Anglia in the Autumn.

Men worked on trawler ships catching the herring, but on land, it was the women's job to preserve them. Because there was no refrigeration, when herring were caught, they needed to be salted, smoked or frozen quickly. The herring girls typically salted their catches. Women worked in groups of three or four, gutting and salting, each group packing one barrel at a time. The women were paid depending on the amount of barrels they finished, so it paid to work fast.

The work was all outside, so it could be freezing cold in the winter. Standing in a quagmire of mud and fish guts (imagine the smell!), the women worked with sharp knives to gut the fish, which could cause injuries, and combined with the salt and brine, the work could be very painful. It was also extremely tiring. The women had to work for as long as it took to gut and salt the whole day's catch, which could be up to fifteen hours a day.

It would have been scary for some. Some girls started work at sixteen. The women would often be away from home for months at a time. Some of the herring girls from the Scottish islands may not even have spoken English, only Gaelic. However, working in the herring industry gave these women huge amounts of freedom to travel and work, increasing their independence and confidence. Some crews travelled and lived together for a whole season, instilling a huge amount of camaraderie and community in the group.

Good point!! Have you messaged them to correct their error?? 😜

Omg this def got my attention 🙈🤣 I agree with what she said!! 😘

That's the world over! It is presumed the men are the great artists, writers, intellectuals etc when all the time it's the hard working women who have been shoved in the background 🙈 #Womanhooded

There's also the film Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures
Hidden Figures is a Hollywood film about three African-American women who helped NASA launch pioneer astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 196212. The women, Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, broke the gender and race ceiling working as NASA mathematicians, computer experts and engineers during the Jim Crow era in the United States2. The film was nominated for an Oscar1.

Can't vouch for the choices but if you have Netflix:10 Documentaries That Celebrate the Power of WomenBecause well-behaved women rarely make history.

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/womens-history-month-documentaries

There was a TV series about the Western Approaches Tactical Unit mentioned upthread. I can't remember what it was called but well worth watching if you can find it.

Fabulous thread. Thank you.

I have a lot of conversations about films in our house. To explain why I don't want to see yet another film or TV series about men. Am sure SAS rogue hero's is great. But am sick of watching history about men, for men.

Will hunt out 'Made in Dagenham ', thank uou for the idea. Maybe somebody will eventually realise the rich history of women's endeavours that would be perfect for lots of films and tv.

I know that's what struck me when I read it! So many centuries and nothing bloody changes!

@Boiledbeetle that poem could have been written yesterday. Amazing woman.

To go with your Nellie Bly...

Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore (February 11, 1861 – January 6, 1929) was an American journalist and author, perhaps now best known for her 1889–1890 race around the world against Nellie Bly, which drew worldwide attention. The majority of her writings were literary works. She published all of her works as Elizabeth Bisland.

In November 1889, the New York World announced that it was sending its reporter Nellie Bly around the world, in a bid to beat Phileas Fogg's fictitious 80-day journey in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Catching wind of this publicity stunt, John Brisben Walker, who had just purchased the three-year-old and still-fledgling Cosmopolitan, decided to dispatch Bisland on her own journey.

Ultimately, however, Bly triumphed over Bisland. Critically, while in England, Bisland was told (and apparently believed) she had missed her intended ride, the swift German steamer Ems leaving from Southampton, even though her publisher had bribed the shipping company to delay its departure. It is unknown whether she was intentionally deceived.[13] She was thus forced to catch the slow-going Bothnia on January 18, departing from Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, ensuring that Bly would prevail.

Bisland's ship did not arrive in Manhattan until January 30. She completed her trip in 76 1⁄2 days, also well ahead of Fogg's fictional record. Bisland wrote a series of articles for the Cosmopolitan on her journey, subsequently published as a book entitled, In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around The World (1891).

Interestingly there is a chance that the article I posted earlier about a woman's cycle was written by Elizabeth 's sister Mary Bisland, but I haven't been able to nail down the connection.