Women earned 40 percent of the computer science degrees at American universities until 1984. In the '60s, women were half of the workforce in the computing industry. It's really important for women in tech and women who use tech to understand this core fact- that computing is absolutely and originally our domain. Why did the gendering of the work change?

Women were the first programmers, but now it seems to be a field dominated by men. And it went away essentially parallel to the invention of the mechanical computer, which happened independently. Women were predominantly doing that because they were cheaper than men to hire. And so large-scale mathematical calculations had to be done by networks of people working together in this kind of factorylike way. So early astronomy, ballistics, maritime navigation-all these calculation-intensive pseudo-technological areas-they all required math that was too substantial for a single individual to do. It shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore.Claire Evans: The emergence of the Scientific Age, if you will, required a lot of mathematical labor, which we did not have machines to do for us. This inspiring call to action is a revelation: women have embraced technology from the start. Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention and the longest odds to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can’t imagine life without.

Meet Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the tortured, imaginative daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. But they’ve often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don’t even realize. Women are not ancillary to the history of technology they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But the little-known fact is that female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation – they’ve just been erased from the story.

The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers.

Broad Band by Claire L. Evans