It is no secret that the Technology industry is like an unofficial boys’ club with a “no girls allowed” sign on the front door. Every time, men are seeing hogging all the headlines while women are either behind, or nowhere to be seen. That is why, this article primarily focuses on women who’ve left a footprint in the tech industry but are not given enough credit.
On Feb. 20, 1962, NASA launched one of the most important space flights in U.S. history when it sent astronaut John Glenn into orbit around the Earth. That stunning achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the work of four African-American women who served as the brains behind the flight.
The four women — Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden — are now the subjects of both the new book “Hidden Figures”.
The group of women computed the rocket trajectories and calculated reentry angles and everything else that was necessary to send a human into space and bring them back home safely. Lives were on the line, as was America’s reputation in the dramatic space race against the Soviet Union.
And they did it during the throes of intense racial discrimination that came in the 1950s and ’60s, said Margot Lee Shetterly, the book’s author and the daughter of one of NASA’s first black engineers.
“And we’re talking about Virginia in the Jim Crow south where racial segregation was a legal necessity,” she said. “These women were put into a separate office. Technically, they were called the West Computing office, but colloquially they were known as the ‘colored computers.’ And although they did the same work as their white female counterparts… they were also forced to use a colored bathroom and sit at a segregated table at the cafeteria.”
Despite the discrimination, the women rose through the ranks of the space agency — as they did previously at their historically black colleges — and broke some of the most fortified glass ceilings in the labor force.
“It was sheer talent. This is the kind of job that you don’t get through the door if you’re not good at it. That’s just the simple fact. You have to be able to literally do the math in order to get into the door,” Shetterly said.
Image: mentalfloss.com
