How Women Got Squeezed out of Tech

Ada Lovelace Chalon (1815 - 1852). Inventor of computer programming.

The BBC World Service produced this half-hour long podcast about the history of computer programming. Few people know that for nearly 200 years computing was a woman’s world.

The program explores how women dominated the early days of programming. The program’s host, Manuela Saragosa, digs into how men took over the field. She explores what can be done to balance things out again?

Saragosa charts the female history of computing, starting with the nineteenth century pioneer Ada Lovelace, with the help of mathematician Hannah Fry and historian Marie Hicks.

She also speaks to Dame Steve Shirley, who founded an all-women tech firm in the 1960s. She also asks computing professor Joanna Bryson about her work detecting the gender bias built into modern technology.

Listen to the podcast here.