Think technology is a man's game? Think again thanks to these pioneering powerhouses. Girl power indeed!
'This is a man's world, but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl'. James Brown must have been thinking about the web development industry when he penned his best-selling hit because women are taking over the male-dominated web world. Although the technology sector may seem full of one particular gender thanks to the global fame of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbeg, behind-the-scenes and computer screens is a host of female trailblazers changing the landscape of web development, and you could be one of them. In fact, research has shown that women excel in a developer’s position, as they're more likely to put their heart and soul into projects and pay greater attention to detail. Hurrah!
Here are three women who paved the way for web developers everywhere...
TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH LIKE AULIA HALIMATUSSADIAH
There aren't many 23-year-olds that can boast the title of being a global entrepreneur, but launching a successful online book store makes you just that. Aulia may have quit her job as a web developer, but her technical training enabled her to follow her dream four years later when she created Indonesia's first self-publishing web site, giving tens of thousands of aspiring Indonesian writers a way to upload their books and print them on demand.
Today, that self-publishing site, NulisBuku.com, has 60,000 writers, and 6,000 books uploaded on the platform. Not only has Aulia become a celebrated technology entrepreneur and a prolific novelist who publishes her work on her own site, she's been credited as a source of inspiration for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
GET BLOGGING LIKE GINA TRAPANI
You don't get voted the Most Influential Women in Technology two years running for nothing. Gina is a perfect example of how starting a simple blog can lead to endless successful opportunities. After launching Lifehacker in 2005, Trapani went on to leading development of ThinkUp, an open-source social media aggregation and analysis tool at Expert Labs. Three books written and endless apps designed later, Gina is now Director of Engineering at Postlight in New York.
PUSH BOUNDARIES LIKE ADA LOVELACE
It's easy to assume that men were at the helm of all technological discoveries but did you know that the first computer programmer was in fact a woman in the 1800's? That's right, Ada wrote the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that is still used today in web development. Although her predictions that computers could be used to compose music, produce graphics, and be useful to science were laughed at, she proved everyone wrong, even if it was 100 years later.
From creating your own publishing site to writing the first algorithm, the web development world is being taken by storm by women and is an industry that will only get bigger as technology improves. Join these impressive ladies and make tech history by changing to a career in web development- who knows what you might discover next!