In March we celebrate Women’s History Month – and International Women’s Day, today, March 8th – a time for us to recognize and celebrate the contributions women have made over the course of history in a variety of fields.
Technology careers have historically been a challenging choice for women – often making it hard for them to enter the field and find suitable and desirable positions. In fact, women hold only 25% of all the jobs in the tech industry, despite making up almost half of the total workforce.
Women have been the brains behind some of the biggest achievements within the tech industry. The Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) – the world’s first electric computer – was programmed by a team of six women and used during The Second World War. Margaret Hamilton, a lead software engineer of the Apollo moon project, is credited with having coined the term “software engineering” while developing the guidance and navigation system used in the Apollo spacecraft. Her work enabled human-kind to land on the moon in a critical and groundbreaking “importance over sequence” prioritization in computing technology.
“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it—and those building it—would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process. When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline,” Hamilton said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Margaret Hamilton stands next to a huge stack of Apollo code
written by her and her team in 1969.
Shamrock Solutions is proud to be a Women Owned Small Business, and continually striving for more diversity in our workplace and acknowledging the achievements of women across the globe. We want to thank and recognize the women of Shamrock especially for bringing their expertise, know-how, and passion to make our team great each and every day!
Wishing a very happy Woman’s Day to the strong, intelligent, talented and wonderful women of the world!