New role for science heroine of the past

Ada Lovelace Day highlights women's role in technology over centuries, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

WHY DON’T more women go into technology, and why are the ones who work in the field generally so invisible?

Perplexed by these questions, London-based Suw Charman-Anderson came up with a personal answer that has spurred thousands of men and women to write a blog post in honour of an inspirational woman in technology.

Ada Lovelace Day, which was celebrated last Wednesday, is now an annual event commemorating tech heroines. It is named for and falls on the birthday of an extraordinary 19th-century woman, Ada Lovelace, a gifted mathematician (and the daughter of the poet Lord Byron).

Encouraged by her mother, Lovelace showed remarkable ability in science and mathematics and became a close friend and intellectual companion to Charles Babbage. He had designed a device that is generally considered to be the first working computer, called the Difference Engine. The programming language Ada is named for her.

“Year on year I’d attend a big conference and there would be hardly any women speaking and hardly any women attending,” says Charman-Anderson, a social media consultant who has worked in several areas of internet design and technology.

The discussion would often turn to the dearth of women in tech – or the perceived dearth. “There are lots of women working in technology but there should be lots more. I thought: why are we having a problem naming the women in technology? I also got tired of this constant complaint about there being no women in technology.”

Annoyed at hearing complaints but seeing no actual response, she decided to do something. She recalled that studies had shown the importance of role models in inspiring people to pursue an area of study. “I thought, role models – we can do role models!”

She decided that a good, simple way to tell the world about technology heroines was to hold a day of blogging about women in technology to highlight that woman are and have been technologists for decades – even centuries – and continue to pursue the field.

“I wanted to get women thinking. Whether they’re famous or not, whether it’s your mum or your sister – who are the women who inspire us to do what we do?”

She chose Ada Lovelace as namesake for the event.

“I was trying to find a name for it [the project]. A friend said Ada Lovelace – she’s the inventor of programming. And she’s a really good figurehead in so many ways. She was working on ideas of symbolic logic that were very new at the time; mathematicians were struggling with it. She was right at the cutting edge and lots came from her work. She was an amazing mind and an amazing talent.”

After her early death – she was not even 40 – Lovelace’s husband wrote of her: “She mastered the mathematical side of a question in all its minuteness . . . her power of generalisation was indeed most remarkable, coupled as it was with that of minute and intricate analysis.”

To kick off the event last year, Charman-Anderson used the Pledgebank.com website to enable people to make a pledge to make a post. Then she sent out a tweet on Twitter about her plans; and the idea was picked up rapidly and went viral. “I just had an idea; put it on Twitter and ran with it. I really didn’t do much promotion. Before I knew it, it had just taken off.”

This year Charman-Anderson has had fewer pledges – last year they reached over 2,000 pledges and 2,000 fans on Facebook. This year she was aiming to hit 3,000 pledges but the final pledged count by the morning of Ada Lovelace Day was just shy of 2,000. She attributes this in part to a lower level of media interest this year and the fact that last year many people wrote about several women rather than just one and might have felt they had “done their bit”.

She also thinks numbers were affected by her decision to move the pledges from Pledgebank.com to a dedicated Findingada.com website.

She says this year people and organisations are getting much more involved with events rather than making a blog post. “This year is about growth and consolidation.”

Links to this year’s blog posts are at Findingada.com/list/