African-American women were among early pioneers in computing in the United States. Generally they were hired as mathematicians to do technical computing needed to support aeronautical and other research. They included such women as Katherine G. Johnson, who had a career of decades at NASA. Among her projects was calculating the flight path for the United States' first mission into space in 1961. She is credited as co-author of 26 scientific papers. The practice in 1960 was to list only the head of the division as author. The crediting of Johnson as an author in a peer-reviewed NASA report is significant.
African-American women were also among the ENIAC programmers who programmed the first digital computer for the US Army. Their stories have not been documented. Given the dearth of information regarding the contributions of women in early computer science, it is likely that other African-American women have made significant contributions to computer science and society.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) was founded in 1947, but computer science developed later as an academic field. In 1969 Clarence "Skip" Ellis became the first African American to earn a doctorate degree in Computer Science. Ten years later the first African-American woman earned a doctorate in Computer Science. One of the first women to have earned a doctorate degree in Computer Science was Marsha R. Williams at Vanderbilt University in 1982.
In the mid-1980s, the representation of women in Computer Science peaked at approximately 40%. The decline in the representation of women has been attributed by some analysts to the increased marketing of personal computers and video games to boys. There has been a decline in women of different races overall in computing in the United States; the representation of African-American women in the field has continued to be lower than that of white female peers. For example, in 1985 when the number of women in computing was at a high, 77% of the related degrees were earned by White women while fewer than 8% were earned by African-American women. In 2002, 1.3% of the doctorate degrees earned were awarded to African-American women.
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Statistics
The representation of African-American women in Computer Science has been historically low. This is well documented, The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) reports the following data:
Between 1977 and 2013 (the years in which data has been recorded by the NCES), the greatest number of African-American women to earn a doctorate degree in Computer Science in one year was 10 (2008).
In 2012, the Computing Research Association (CRA) Taulbee Survey reported there were "merely 56 Black/African American computer science tenure-track faculty members at PhD-granting institutions, which includes 12 (or 0.6%), 21 (or 1.4%), and 23 (or 3.0%) Full, Associate, and Assistant Professors, respectively."
A 2010-2011 survey of Computer Science degrees awarded in US institutions found that of the 1,456 PhDs awarded in the period, 16 (1.2%) were awarded to African Americans. In 2013, of the 1,563 computer science PhDs awarded, 19 were to African-Americans.
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Representation in other media
- Margot Lee Shetterly's history, Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) recounts the achievements of Katherine Johnson and other African-American women at NASA. It was adapted as a feature film, Hidden Figures, released in 2016. It stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson, an engineer. Kevin Costner has a supporting role.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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