Christina Murphy shines a new light on women’s intellect and creativity, exploring the many ways they have improved society through their inventiveness.
Contrary to popular belief, even in the twenty-first century, women still suffer from going unrecognised for all the hard work they contribute to society. In 1993 a phrase was coined by Margaret W. Rossiter, calling this systemic bias that denies and minimizes the contributions of women in science and academia the “Matilda effect”. This was particularly addressing how in most cases women’s work and findings were attributed to their male colleagues.
The fact is, despite systemic barriers, including lack of access to education and funding, women have continually proven that they are just as capable, if not more so, as men. They have invented countless significant, everyday advancements, both creative and pragmatic. Some of the best known ones that you might not know were invented by women include the first electrical computer, sex chromosomes, the chocolate chip cookie, the modern bra, the modern medical syringe, and countless literary works.
The first electrical computer was called ENIAC, standing for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was the first programmable, electronic, and general-purpose digital computer, that was used on behalf of the US Army to aid them during World War Two. Up until this point, a lot of computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was the first to have them all. This is what made it so popular.
It was completed in 1945 and was accredited to John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, but the original programming of ENIAC was handled by six women who were known as “human computers”, but were not publicly recognised until the 1980s. These include, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, and Frances Spence.
These women, who were carefully selected from the hundreds of women who were hired by the Moore School of Engineering not only determined how to input ENIAC programs, but also developed a complex understanding of the computer’s inner workings. Without them, society wouldn’t have made some of the technological advances we rely on today, and they aided paving the way for all the women in STEM who would come after them.
As well as the computer, another woman who excelled in STEM would be Nettie Stevens, who discovered the sex chromones. In 1905, Stevens discovered that sex was determined by chromosomes, specifically the Y chromosome. That same year that she published her findings, Edmund Beecher Wilson published similar findings.