International Women's Day
Happy International Women's Day! On March 8, we celebrate all the amazing, strong and beautiful women who inspire us and their achievements and rights worldwide.
It dates back to 1908 in New York when 15,000 women marched through the city, demanding voting rights and a better pay. A year later, on February 28, the first Women's Day was celebrated.
During the Second International Socialist Women's Conference held in 1910 in Copenhagen, March 8 was suggested to become the official International Women's Day. The conference was attended by hundreds of delegates from seventeen countries, discussing a number of issues including women's suffrage (the right of women to vote in elections). The following year, millions of people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, marked the International Women's Day for the first time.
In 1917, after women's strikes in Russia, women were granted the right to vote. It is believed that this event marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution. In his book 'History of the Russian Revolution', Leon Trotsky, a Soviet politician, wrote "23 February (8th March) was International Woman's Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this 'Women's Day' would inaugurate the revolution."
Later, in 1975, the United Nations adopted the celebration. Until then, it was mainly praised by socialist movements and communist countries.
Ever since, on that day, countries worldwide spark conversations about women’s rights and equality.
As a tech company, we would like to take a moment and celebrate some of women's achievements in computer science:
Ada Lovelace became the first computer programmer in 1843 by designing the first computer algorithm.
Hedy Lamarr invented the frequency-hopping technology in 1942, During World War II. Her invention later helped the emergence of wireless signals like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Jean Bartik and five other women developed many of the foundations of software programming in 1945-46, while working on Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). These six women, whose work was crucial for the project, were not invited to the completion dinner celebration.
Rear Admiral Grace Hoper created one of the world's first compilers in 1952. Her programming language design work led to the creation of COBOL - compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use.
A curious fact: in the late 1960's programming was already recognized as a prestigious job but yet women weren’t allowed to enjoy the benefits of such a good position. That’s why, advertisements were launched to discourage hiring of women in the IT sector.
Later in the early 80s, the home computer and the game consoles were marketed as male toys. Other advertising strategies led to the misconception that computer science is for boys, not for girls, and the notion of the geek coders further discouraged women to pursue careers as software developers.
Nowadays, people worldwide bring awareness of the men dominated ICT labor market and are striving to raise the percentage of women in the industry.
Melon is proud to say that our team consists of 160 professionals and of them 38.3% are women. The average for Bulgaria is 27.7%. Throughout the years, our developers, both male and female, have actively supported the tech education of young girls and boys, defying stereotypes on coding.