Early IT industry had women programmers. The world's first programmer (1842-3) was
Ada Lovelace, who came up with the algorithms for the Analytical Engine which was the theoretical foundation for the modern computer.
History of the Computer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPDy2y4AjSo&t=9m40s
Grace Murray Hopper, grandmother of COBOL (1945)
Pioneering Women in Computer Science:
http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/readings/p175-gurer.pdf
Her time is when "
bugs" and "
debugging" were coined, because an actual bug (moth) caused a relay to fail.
"third programmer on the world's first large-scale digital computer."
While Hopper was working on the Mark II in the summer of 1945 under the command of Aiken, an unlucky moth caused a relay to fail. Hopper and the other programmers taped the deceased moth in the logbook with a note, "First actual case of bug being found," which is currently on display at the Naval Museum in Dahlgren, Virg Aiken had the habit of coming into the room and asking, "Are you making any numbers?" Now, during a slow time, the programmers could reply that they were "debugging" the computer, thus introducing this term into computing language.
1946:
Jean Bartik and the ENIAC women:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPweFhhXFvY
In 1946 six brilliant young women (Betty Snyder Holberton, Jean Jennings Barik, Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence) programmed the first all-electronic, programmable computer, the ENIAC, a project run by the U.S. Army in Philadelphia as part of a secret World War II project. They learned to program without programming languages or tools (for none existed)—only logical diagrams. By the time they were finished, ENIAC ran a ballistics trajectory perfectly! Yet when the ENIAC was unveiled to the press and the public in 1946, the women were never introduced… and their story was lost for decades.
Some of the first videogames had prominent women behind them. The Adam Ruins Everything video above covers them. Atari's
Carol Shaw (3D Tic Tac Toe in 1980), Centipede creator
Donna Bailey, and of course
Roberta Williams for adventure games (1984). If it weren't for Roberta, we wouldn't have storytelling in videogames.
The Most Important Women in the History of Video Games