Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day
From mass Wikipedia edits to tech sprints, women scientists were celebrated this year.
Ada Lovelace, only child of the famous Lord Byron, also happened to be the world’s first computer programmer.
Her notes on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine are recognised as the first algorithm ‘intended to be processed by a machine’. Her work later inspired Alan Turing as he built the world’s first computer.
Although Ada Lovelace is today recognised for her achievements, few other female scientists fare so well.
Not only is there little awareness of female scientists or their contributions to the field, but in some cases their discoveries were actually attributed to men.
This Mother Jones article highlights eight cases, including that of Rosalind Franklin, the first person to capture an image of DNA and its double helix.
The lack of the visibility of women in the scientific fields prompted the launch of Ada Lovelace Day back in 2009.
It started off as an international day of blogging ‘to draw attention to women in technology’.
The idea was that highlighting notable women in science and sharing the stories of women scientists would not only provide role models to inspire girls interested in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) but would also support the women currently working in those fields.
Ada Lovelace Day is currently celebrated in mid-October each year and has become ‘an international day celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths’.
It has expanded beyond blogs to cover a wide range of events.
Scientists Maia Weinstock and Anne Fausto-Sterling organised a mass Wikipedia edit, asking participants to add entries to wiki of notable women in the STEM field.
Wikipedia has become an incredibly important source of knowledge and the online go-to when someone wants to look something up. But few women feature on Wikipedia, providing a distorted view of history – and of current society – which ignores women’s contribution, effectively writing them out.
Wikipedia has run into trouble before for sidelining women, when female American authors were classed in a category of their own rather than included in the general article on American authors. Although the editors argued of a lack of space, the principle was that women should be included in the main debate – not in a separate category that leaves men as default.
While few women may appear in the pages of Wikipedia, it seems even fewer are contributing to Wikipedia. According to the New York Times, 87 per cent of Wiki editors are men. This matters; if women do not participate in the creation and recording of knowledge – and history – the picture that emerges will be skewed and imbalanced.
The Wikipedia edit-a-thon therefore had two broad goals: to increase the women in STEM fields who feature on Wiki, but also to increase the number of women contributing to Wiki.
Though the event, complete with an introduction on Wiki editing and featuring talks, took place at Brown University, people could also participate remotely. A Wiki page, naturally, listed suggestions for pages to create and which pages of existing female scientists needed expanding or cleaning-up.
The result? Twenty new entries were created and 68 were cleaned up and expanded. No small feat.
It wasn’t only on Wikipedia that women in STEM were celebrated.
This year, the UK’s events included a ‘nerd cabaret’ at Imperial College London – an evening of talks, live demos and even songs.
More than 40 grassroots events took place all over the world, from tech sprints in Dublin to a thoughtswork in Kampala designed to encourage women in Africa to get more involved in STEM.
The day generated a lot of press coverage: about Ada Lovelace, about the lack of women in STEM and about raising awareness of the current women in STEM.
The trick will be turning this type of attention from a one-day affair to an all-year round recognition of women scientists.