Closing the Gender Data Gap in AI

The first computer algorithm is said to have been written in the early 1840s, for the prototype of the Analytical Engine. Ada Lovelace, a mathematician dubbed a "female genius" in her posthumous biography. As the field of computing developed over the next century following Lovelace's death, the typing work involved in creating computer programs was seen as "women's work," a role viewed as akin to switchboard operator or secretary. Women wrote the software, while men made the hardware -- the latter seen, at the time, as the more prestigious of the two tasks. And, during the Space Race of the 1950s and '60s, three Black women, known as "human computers," broke gender and racial barriers to help NASA send the first men into orbit.