Recent psychology research into how a role model impacts careers indicates that women need female role models more than men need male role models. This research highlights the need for female role models in the IT industry in order to positively impact the careers of the few women in it, and also attract more women into the field. One problem however, is that the profile of most women in the industry is very low - after all, when you attend a conference, how many speakers are female?
In order to address this problem, and also to celebrate the work that women are doing in IT, some smart cookie has come up with the idea of Ada Lovelace Day, which happens to be today, March 24.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.
In honor of today, I thought I might give a shout-out to a few of the groovy chick developers that I work with at ThoughtWorks, so happy Ada Lovelace Day Julie Yauches, Elly Gandy, Liz Keogh, Navya Reddy, Isabella Degen and Chrysovalanto (Val) Kousettii.