When Charles Babbage was doing a paper design of his second calculating machine, the Analytical Engine, he ended up corresponding with a mathematician who quickly saw its promise as a general-purpose computing machine. Her name was the Countess Ada Byron Lovelace, and she is widely credited as being the first programmer, back in the middle of the 19th century.
More than a century later, when ENIAC, the world's first computer, went on line at the University of Pennsylvania, all six of its programmers were women.
While the percentage of college-educated professionals that are female has in general been rising, the proportion in IT (outside of data entry) has been falling.
It is in the interest of reversing this trend that I am providing this resource page. If anyone finds a good web site, or reads a good article, relevant to this issue, please let me know, and I will post it here. (Maybe I'll set up a comment page someday where people can express their opinions on the reason for the disparity?)
Thanks,
James Heliotis
| Title | Author | Date | Publisher/ Publication |
Comments, if any |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| paper collection (PDF) | Lenore Blum | 1995-present | discussion of CMU's push to achieve gender balance |
|
| IT Gender Gap Widening | Drew Robb | 6 Jan 2003 | IT Management | |
| The
Anatomy of Interest: Women in Undergraduate Computer Science |
Jane Margolis, Allan Fisher, and Faye Miller | 6 Jan 2003 | Women's Quarterly Studies, 2000: 1&2 | Looks at differences in ways computers interest young students |
| RIT Project EDGE (a completed project) | Computing Research Assocication |
| Women in Technology International | IEEE Women in Engineering Committee |
| Assoc. for Women in Computing | ACM Committee on Women in Computing |
| Rice U. GirlTECH (younger audience) | Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility |
| Institute for Women and Technology | Carnegie Mellon's Gender Papers |
Information Technology Association of America
|
Women at CS/Carnegie-Melon U. |
