Women in STEM Industries
International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It was first celebrated on March 19th, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Both men and women attended rallies to speak up for women’s rights to vote and to work. However, even with these huge efforts, there is still a long way to go. According to Catalyst, the higher the corporate ladder, the fewer the women in S&P 500 companies. STEM Women states that the percentage of female students studying engineering and technology degrees made up of a mere 19% of the total students between 2017 and 2018.
International Women’s Day 2020 #EachforEqual campaign emphasizes that each and every individual can make a drastic difference for gender equality by raising awareness or celebrating women’s achievements.
Women have made and are continually making huge impacts in many industries, especially in technology. In the 19th century, there were few women who pursued a career in the STEM fields. However, positions and opportunities were limited. Only single women were able to stay with their Science and Technology jobs. But, this didn’t stop women like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper.
Ada Lovelance
Lovelace performed as the key interpreter for Babbage’s project, “the analytical engine”. This mathematical machine has thousands of cogwheels having the ability to perform more functions with higher accuracy. Lovelace translated an article by Charles Babbage, adding in her own notes including machine algorithms and how Babbage’s device works. She was able to contribute her knowledge and wisdom to computer science.
Image Source: 1843 Magazine
Grace Hopper
The mother of computing. Hopper firmly believed that computer code could be written or read by computers in the English language. She led the development of the first computer language compiler, a precursor of the Common Business Oriented Language. In 1991, Hopper was the first female awarded the National Medal of Technology for her contributions to tech innovation.
Image Source: Yale
These women helped pave a path for other women in the 21st century and beyond to continue to contribute to technologies’ rapid growth rate.
Megan Price
Price once stated in an interview with Amstat News that she has always been a math nerd. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in the field of Statistics and earned her Doctorate in Biostatistics. She currently serves as the executive director at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. Her strategies and methods for statistical analysis of human rights resulted in further advancing philanthropic endeavors.
Image Source: HRDAG
Neha Narkhede
Narkhede worked at Linkedin as a Senior Software Engineer. She and her team were able to develop Apache Kafka, a system capable of processing billions of events each day. This system is good for implementing large scale message processing applications, metric gathering, activity tracking, etc. She is currently the co-founder and CTO of Confluent, a streaming data technology company.
Image Source: Twitter
Although there is still a low percentage of women in STEM, there are ways to empower and encourage women in these fields. Offering support, recognizing gender bias, and including everyone’s voices can go a long way in pushing towards the efforts of women’s equality. At MEDL Mobile, we possess a high value of diversity in the workplace and believe in its intrinsic value. A diverse environment encourages innovative thinking, an exchange of diverse ideas, and different perspectives.
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