History
African-American women were hired as mathematicians to do technical computing needed to support aeronautical and other research. They included such women as Katherine G. Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, who had careers of decades at NASA.[1] Among Johnson's 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.[2]
Black women were also among the ENIAC programmers,[3] 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 Black women have made significant contributions to computer science and society.[4]
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 Black man to earn a doctorate degree in computer science. In 1981, Deborah Washington Brown became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate degree in computer science (then part of the applied mathematics program) from Harvard University.[5] A year later, in 1982 Marsha R. Williams[6] further integrated the field when she earned her doctorate degree in computer science.[7]
In the mid-1980s, the representation of women in computer science peaked at approximately 40%.[8] 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 all races in computing in the United States; the representation of Black 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 Black women.[9] In 2002, 1.3% of the computer science doctorate degrees earned were awarded to Black women. In 2017, two female computer scientists Timnit Gebru and Rediet Abebe founded the workshop Black in AI, in order to help increases the presence and inclusion of Black people in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).[10][11]
