On the eve of March 8, we would like to congratulate all our readers, as well as dispel one fairly popular myth that programming is exclusively a man's prerogative.
Yes, it is true today. If you go to any IT company, it is rare to find representatives of the beautiful half of humanity in the office where the product is being developed. But this has not always been the case and, most likely, it will not always be so. Let's start, perhaps, from the beginning.
The world's first programmer
So the world's first programmer was a woman named Ada Lovelace. It was she who wrote the first program for it in 1833, after meeting the inventor Charles Babbage, who wanted to invent the world's first analytical mechanism. Ada was well aware of the potential of such a device and therefore got to work with enthusiasm. This is how the world's first script appeared, which made it possible to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers.
However, the idea failed to come to fruition. The fact is that Babbage, despite the abundance of ideas, did not create the world's first PC. Accordingly, Lovelace's program has remained exclusively on paper. But this did not reduce the value of the code, as well as the attempt to create the first automated algorithm.
The development of programming — women again
With the advent of the first digital computers in the 1940s, women were once again at the forefront of new technologies. Men were not interested in writing programs, as they wanted to create hardware. Gene Jennings, Marilyn Weskoff, Ruth Lichterman and others were the first members of the team of programmers working with the new ENIAC computer at that time.
Women also wrote software for the first computers that worked in the private sector of the economy. For example, Grace Hopper is one of the creators of the world's first compiler. And the Fortran language was optimized by Fran Allen.
As the demand for programming grew, so did racial stereotypes. For example, Arlen Lee became the first black female programmer in Canada, despite the fact that at that time, in this country, as well as in the US, the attitude towards black people was extremely hostile.
When things changed
Around the 1980s, the situation began to change significantly. Men have begun to enter the profession. And if by this time, the male/female ratio in programming was almost equal, starting in the mid-80s, the number of female programmers declined. For example, in 2010, only 17.6% of all computer science graduates were women.
Experts believe that one of the reasons for the displacement of women from the profession was the introduction of the first PC. Prior to that, university graduates had no experience working with computers. Accordingly, everyone was on equal terms.
With the advent of the first PCs, young people began to play them and learn basic programming concepts. Accordingly, by the mid-80s of the twentieth century, young people were already well acquainted with computers and knew the basic concepts of programming before graduation.
Another reason why the number of men in the profession has increased dramatically is the stereotypes that were imposed on corporate managers. They believed that “nerds” men who spent all their free time on PCs would do the best job. It is believed that only men can “code” successfully, and this is in their nature. By the way, people in Silicon Valley still hold about the same opinion.
Gender discrimination has also played an important role. Women programmers have begun to leave the profession. This is because they saw injustice when men with lower qualifications were given management positions.
Attempts to change the situation
Back in the late 90s of the 20th century, they tried to change the situation. For example, Carnegie Melon University sought to equalize the number of software graduates. Therefore, instead of being divided by gender, students were divided into groups based on their experience. Admission was no longer given to students who had been programming before university. This made it possible to increase the percentage of female students to 42% after a while.
In today's world full of social media, women are gradually returning to the profession. Programmers no longer lead a lifestyle that borders on asocial and are not blocked from the rest of society. On the contrary, they are working on technologies that are firmly embedded in our lives and are an integral part of almost every layman. Naturally, this was the reason why the interest in development on the part of the beautiful half of humanity has grown significantly.
A few names
And now we would like to tell you a little bit about those women who have achieved some success in the field of software development today. And the first name on this list is Mary Meeker. It was she who, at the end of the 1990s, showed the world the great potential of the Internet. Today, she holds a managerial position in an investment fund whose main focus is innovation.
Cheryl Sandberg works at Facebook. In 2001, after the US Treasury, she joined Google's young sales team. Despite the fact that her work is not directly related to programming, Cheryl is an excellent example of how a woman can join an IT startup and significantly help a start-up business grow.
Marissa Meyer is also not a pure “coder”, although she studied programming at Stanford University. Under her leadership, Yahoo has achieved significant success and its shares have grown. By the way, Marissa, like Cheryl, started her career at Google.
Susan Wojcicki came to the IT world by accident. She just rented out her garage to two weird guys who made a big difference in her life. Yes, we are talking about the creators of Google, at that time it was an unknown startup, but today the search engine, and even with its own browser, occupies a leading position on the Internet. By the way, at the time of joining Google, Susan was already working for Intel, another IT industry giant.
Afterword
As you can see, programming has not always been an exclusively male prerogative. Moreover, the first programs were written by women. Despite the fact that the situation has changed over time and women have begun to leave the profession, today there is another round of evolution. Representatives of the beautiful half of humanity are not only returning to IT, but also taking leading positions in various well-known companies, not only being pure “coders”, but also advertisers, managers, and so on.
Gender inequality is gradually being erased and more girls are starting to learn programming. After all, it promises not only high wages, but also job prospects in really interesting projects.
Many parents today are thinking about sending their girls to programming. Therefore, in private online schools, the ratio of boys to girls is gradually equalizing.
Programming even today is a profession of the future and with a future. The development of artificial intelligence, the Internet, and the emergence of many interesting projects, such as Blockchain — all this suggests that programmers will have a lot of jobs in the future and the demand for them will only increase. And it doesn't matter if the programmer is male or female. Everyone can find something interesting for themselves here and develop in their own direction.
