Welcome back for the last session of this wonderful event.
It's billed as a panel session, but actually I think you should regard it as,
lucky you, it's four mini talks.
>> [LAUGH] >> [COUGH]
>> Each of at most eight to ten minutes.
And you know the speakers, don't you?
>> [LAUGH] >> I would like to say that this panel or
these mini talks and the whole topic was my idea.
But it wasn't, it was actually Ursula's.
Thank you very much.
Cuz I think this is a really, really fitting topic.
And I'm really glad to chair it, because just a couple of weeks ago,
I was in a very public forum and someone asked me in front of 200 people.
Didn't I think Ada Lovelace was a wonderful role model?
And I should have thought of this one earlier.
And I looked at him blankly and I thought, how in Earth could I identify someone
who was born 200 years ago, who didn't go to school and probably wouldn't speak to
someone like me, how can she be a role model?
And then the next thought was well why do we need role models?
Why is everyone harping on about role models.
What I'm really interested in is that women do computer science.
And why is that?
Because of the contribution they can make to science and
society, but even more importantly the joy and the intellectual
satisfaction of actually doing computing science and running a program.
And waiting to see whether it does what you think it will do.
Anyway all that was going through my head on this stage.
And so I think I ended up just answering something else because I couldn't get all
that out in time.
But I think, now we actually have an opportunity to explore this whole concept
of role model of being a woman in science, what it means and
some, hopefully, rather provocative thoughts.
Now, I've been advised we're not doing introductions of speakers very much.
So I'm not gonna introduce our speakers,
I assume you've read your programs from cover to cover.
But I would just add one thing that isn't in your program which is Cheryl Praeger
was just awarded an honorary degree in Santander's University this week,
so congratulations.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> So I had to stick that in.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you, I'm just gonna give you a wee
hint of what each speaker is gonna speak on and then we just get going.
So Murray Pittock's gonna kick off and his strapline is mis remembering women.
Valerie Barr follows and her strapline is why is Ada Lovelace
still the woman that young and the not so young women look to?
Cheryl Praeger has strapline what has changed?
And last, Sue Charman Anderson's strapline is the right
to suck, to be mediocre and to be imperfect.
[LAUGH] So off to you Murray.
Oh and I have a sign that may be appropriate.
>> Right, don't yet for goodness sake,
I feel that I haven't earned your confidence in that sense.
Well, it's a great pleasure to be here, first of all.
And it's been a tremendous conference,
even though it's some distance away from what I have had much experience of myself.
And I think it's been obviously tremendously organized and
supported and lovely little touches.
The most recent of course being that cake which was left of course uncut so
we that we could all take pictures to tweet and I did that.
Now this conference is about Ada Lovelace's memory and how we remember her.
Not presumably as an adulteress, as Oxford University's Com Office suggested.
My contribution takes a different perspective on the central topic.
Because the theorisation of memory and
how we remember is itself a major field of inquiry.
And interestingly, the formulations of memory theory in cultural history and
psychiatry arrived that separately are often compatible.
It is important to raise this issue here for three reasons.
First, this is a conference on how we remember women and
one woman scientist in particular.
Secondly that women are structurally misremembered in our culture and
thirdly because even the act of recuperating memory we can be misled
into misremembering women.
A famous case of this is to be found in work carried out by my erstwhile colleague
Penny Sommerfeld at Manchester, who found that women remembered themselves as having
been excluded from the home guard even when presented with an admission papers and
documentation of their attendance at meetings.
This is a phenomenon known as composure where we remember what is
culturally acceptable for us to remember.
And the cultural memory of the home guard persists overwhelmingly
through the agency of Dad's Army.
The clue is in the title.
With a peak audience of 18 million and voted the fourth best British sitcom
of all time, the sexist premise of Jimmy Penny and
David Croft's 1968 comedy has changed the memories of women who served in the war.
A 2016 remake this is still topical will as far as I know still not include women.
But Dad's Army itself bears witness to another feature of memory theory.
It's economy.
The [FOREIGN], the principle of scarcity, where a diverse set of
data on possible memories or histories are condensed to the selectivity of recall.
The convergence of memories.
The recursivity in remembrance, the recycling models of remembrance and
memory transfers.
That's all getting very kinda art side theoretical.
But i'll just take a few examples.
What this means is, when we remember the Second World War in Britain,
that means the battle of Britain and the war in Europe.
In the US, predominant the Pacific Theater.
In Russia, the great patriotic war.
See how much cover the war in Europe there is in the US,
televisual history of World War II, very little.
The naval struggle of the Napoleonic Era is summed up by Nelson.
He says for us, the British army that Wellington leads at Waterloo,
that's been the 200th anniversary also, there
are only 28% of troops under his direct command were in fact British army troops.
And as we know, Thomas and Waldo will never come from Canada
except in the irritated Canadian film industry's Passchendaele, or
India and to take a recent example from the film Suffragette.
Emily Davidson's a St hugh's Alumna of course, death on 4th June 1913 on camera at the derby.
Is seen inaccurately as transforming a marginal group of activists
into a global movement.
Memory, and this has become truer and truer, from the age of secular statutes in
commemoration began in the 1790s through the electronic media of today
simplifies and repeats, simplifies and repeats.
The cult of celebrity.
The current use of which as a word means to me that love is a lifetime grows.
Individuals are glorified as teams and networks are marginalized.
The story force feeds the history,
and life feeds are just one way that we make clear in the language of our current
means of communication, the narrative of the metaphors that govern our lives.
Because as against perhaps some of the things that have been said today at this
conference I think perhaps one of
the greatest threats we have from technology is not its capacity.
It is its metaphorical presence in our minds and lives.
It's the repetition, it's the repetition.
It's the way in which things are seen in a single dimension or having single
causes which has an effect on everything from public debate to cultural memory.
Now this process creates and
sustains greater inequalities than would otherwise persist.
And gender inequality is one of these.
The construction of cultural remembrance is increasingly selective and
hence increasingly unequal.
It is thronged with exclusion.
But paradoxically, I mean many people will say look women's history has
been recovered, the role of women in science has been recovered.
The huge amount that has been written, as we saw this morning,
on Ada Lovelace the last 40 years shows what has been recovered and
how well it's been recovered.
But, one of the risks of understanding is arguably perpetuated by those who
are seeking to right the wrongs of the past actually reproduce
the paradigmatic cultural memories which misremember that past.
Here for example is a quotation,
from Kathryn Hughes, from the gender roles section of The British Library website.
During the Victorian period, men and
women's roles became more sharper defined than any time in history.
In earlier centuries it had been usual for women to work alongside husbands and
brothers in the family business.
Living over the shop made it easy for women to help out by serving customers or
keeping accounts while also attending to their domestic duties.
No question about what is primary there.
Domestic duties working alongside husbands and
brothers, conditions of support which were entirely about the private sphere.
And here's a section from a state of the art digital resource,
The Old Bailey Online.
In marriage, men were expected to rule over their wives on all property except in
some cases property acquired by the woman before marriage belonged to the husband.
Men were the primary wager and
as all women were expected to be primarily responsible for housework and childcare.
There are of course different emphases on these two.
On both of these accounts, the domestic sphere paradigm of confinement and
inequality is reinforced in order to remember women properly.
But what is properly?
I'm just going to give a few examples.
And of course, I'm going to end with a few names of scientists, but
these aren't scientists.
Agnes Campbell in business from 1676 to 1716 was arguably the leading
bookseller in Edinburgh and
succeeded William Mosman as Printer of the General Assembly in 1712.
She was a book seller in the city for 40 years.
A majority of women in the First Street directory of Edinburgh who are not titled
are described as being in business.
Elizabeth Carter and Elizabeth Hatchett's money lending and
pawn-broking business in 18th century London provides a starting point to
research the strategies by which women like non-conformist men
circumvented legislation designed to exclude them for debt and credit markets.
One route was women to women landing below the radar of which work is only just
starting.
Carter claimed her business was worth 18,000 Pounds, well over 2 and
a half million today.
While another female money lender of the period,
Elizabeth Walters insured her business directly with the Royal Exchange in 1734.
Because you could insure the businesses you legally couldn't own.
The first example I have come across of universal suffrage is the election of
the parish clerk at Inverurie in Aberdeenshire on the 23rd of June, 1536.
And that happened to be a period when 85 of the 90 brewers in the city
where female.
And also a period when civil penalties where exacted
against husbands guilty of domestic abuse.
And had quite a lot of that from increasing amounts
in the 17th century onwards.
If we take just very briefly Lichfield in 1726 who wouldn't.
Women are members of both guilds and merchants companies in the city.
When we remember we need to look at the details.
If we argue that women were, I could go on and on with details.
I don't want to go on anymore.
We can argue that women were always marginalized in the past, but
if we do that we are actually going to forget an awful lot of women
who contributed and who mattered and that brings me to Ada Lovelace.
There's no question that she's honored, as she's being honored here and now.
But isn't it strange that often that honor is still contaminated.
And we've seen that even in recent days with how she's remembered.
The Science Museum describes her as a celebrity from birth.
And one is only a celebrity from birth if one's Ada Lovelace
because of your father's.
It goes on to say Lovelace sought to find balance between the two alternative
parts of her world.
The romanticism and creativity of our father, and the rationality and
science of our mother.
And we've heard actually, some papers in this conference,
which have taken that view and gone down that kind of bifurcated line.
Or sought to reconcile those bifurcated lines.
And that may be absolutely right in terms of Ada Lovelace's achievement,
I'm not a loveless scholar.
But what I would say is, you would have to look quite a long way
before you saw any male scientist who is described in terms
of the intellectual qualities of their patents and the need to reconcile them.
And please find one for me and I'll eat the hat that I'm not wearing.
>> [LAUGH] >> And we've also heard today
the memory of Ada Lovelace still remains contested.
There are still like Bruce Collier, very many skeptics,
who think that really she's remembered for the wrong thing or
she's remembered inaccurately or fraudulently or
in some way which misrepresents her actual contribution.
And we've heard the the push back against that too.
Well, I think we need to be and this is where I'll be a little bit provocative.
I think we need to understand that contestation of memory or
how we should remember somebody, comes from two different sources.
It comes from a desire not to find somebody important
who has long been forgotten.
And it also comes from some of the claims made on that
person's behalf in an effort to make them important.
Ada Lovelace has become an icon who achieved things beyond the social
intellectual position of her gender, though not her class.
Is that what she is?
Or are we remembering her as a convenient shorthand for what she was not?
Of Ada Lovelace Day itself is part of a process of selectivity in memory
of which memory theory as a whole has learned to be somewhat suspicious.
But if her achievements are in fact extraordinary,
and that's why we're having this conference, which is an active memory.
I hope nonetheless to have left you today with a recollection of the selectivity
of memory.
And the need to evidence what we do remember, as well as, and
this is my own controversial claim, that the structures of cultural memory
function to exclude women even when they are remembered.
So although it isn't their day, I would also like to remember
just as a matter of footnotes to this conference, and
just as a matter once again of extraneous detail because facts of [inaudible] are being disputed.
The detail, their names,
if not the lives of people like Faustina Pignatelli Carafa, academician of Bologna.
The mathematician, Maria Andrea Casamayor.
Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil,
marquise du Chatelet, the translator of the Principia.
Susan Jane Cunningham, co-founder of Maths and Astronomy at Swarthmore.
Mary Edwards, employee of the Board of Longitude.
Marie-Sophie Germain winner of the grand prize from the Paris Academy
of Sciences on elasticity at the beginning of the 19th century.
And there are many more than this randomly chosen group of course.
[inaudible] what I say in looking at memory and how we remember and
misremember women is it can only encourage our understanding and
inspire those who come after to know that more than one went before.
And the risks of selectivity are that we end up with excluding the memories of
those we are not remembering in order to cultivate remembering the person we are.
Ada Lovelace may be exceptional but she is thankfully and
looking at the reality of the detail of history, not the only exception.
Thank you very much.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> There's
one thing you have to know before I start with my remarks.
You've heard about ACM yesterday morning and this morning.
So the one piece you need to know is I'm Chair of ACMW,
which is the ACM Counsel on Women and Computing.
That factors in a few minutes.
The Ada Initiative, the Adafruit, The Ada Project, Ada Femin Technology,
Ada Developers Academy, Project Ada, the Ada Lovelace Award, the Ada Women in
Computing Club, Ada Loveless Day, which has advanced over the years in the UK,
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, the Czech Republic, France,
India, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the USA.
Ada Loveless related Facebook posts from groups in Pakistan and Malaysia and
finally you can buy an Ada Lovelace costume from
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe at the Swedish Online PlayStation store.
>> [LAUGH] >> Why?
Why do so many current organizations and
events identify with and recognize Ada Lovelace?
We are well into the 21st century.
Ada was born 200 years ago today.
Why do so many women today seem to look to her still as a model and an icon?
And how is it that this woman who lived her life in the 1800s can be so
important today women in computing?
Especially when by and
large people know very little about the detail and depth of her accomplishments.
Thomas Haigh and Mark Priestley discuss Ada in their September 2015 piece in
Communications of the ACM entitled Innovators Assemble: Ada Lovelace,
Walter Isaacson, and the Superheroines of Computing.
While they make a number of good points in their piece,
there are a number of problems as well.
I will digress long enough to comment on one of the problems.
They state that most areas of science and
engineering are gradually becoming more balanced in their gender representation.
This is a problematic statement for two reasons.
First, they don't place that comment geographically at all.
Though based on the rest of the piece I assume that they are talking about the US.
So the second problem, assuming a US focus they have not accounted for
changing demographics in the US.
Today, almost 60% of college graduates in the US are women.
The only accurate way to gauge relative balance in disciplines
is to look separately at women's degrees and men's degrees.
That perspective shows us that in fact, we're not near balance at all,
we have a long way to go.
Overall in the US 11% of women's degrees are in the science technology,
engineering, math disciplines, STEM.
While 24% of men's degrees are owned in those same fields.
Only biology has true gender balance, 7% of women's degrees and
7% of men's degrees are earned in biology.
So I'm sure you're saying she's a computer scientist, right?
Why doesn't she tell us about computer science?
So the grim statistic 1% of women's college degrees in the US
is earned in computer science and 5% of men's degrees are.
So having set the record straight returning to Ada.
Haigh and Priestley argue that the superhero
narrative is not the best way to understand history.
They argue for the historians responsibility to provide accurate and
nuanced stories.
And they say further that history will ultimately prove more inspiring and
more relevant than superhero stories.
They make a compelling case one I agree with,
that we need to give more airtime to the many, many women who were involved in
the development of computing as a technology and a field.
They close by saying superhero stories have little time for
ordinary humans who exist only to be endangered or rescued.
Reducing the story of women in computing to the heroics of a handful of magical
individuals draws attention away from real human experience and counter
productively suggests that only those with superhuman abilities need apply.
So how do we make sense of this?
How are we to understand the iconic nature of Ada as a figure for women in computing?
And frankly,
why would anyone today resurrect a figure from such a different era?
Where I think Haigh and Priestly go wrong is at the outset of their article
in the very title, where they cast Ada as a superheroin.
I would argue that part of the value of Ada, the reason why she plays an important
role is precisely that she's not seen as a superhero.
She's not seen as being magical in some way.
I do believe however,
that part of her appeal is precisely because she is not of the modern world.
Because she comes from a different era, a different educational system,
a completely different moment in time.
This means that today's young women are not dissuaded by her story.
Because they know that their life has not been and could not be like hers.
So they feel no expectation that they have to be exactly like
Ada to succeed in computing.
Despite the historical differences,
there is something really relatable about her for today's women.
Her parents had some real problems.
That's I think by now the polite way of putting it.
[LAUGH] She did not have educational access equal to that of
the men of her time of comparable intellect.
And there were certainly a fair amount of micromanaging of her day to day life.
Certainly in her younger years.
So I would suggest that there's a lot of young women in the world today,
who can totally relate to that.
At the same time,
she was in many ways able to ignore the script that society wanted to write for
her or maybe somehow she just managed to be unaware of the parts she didn't like.
She did what she wanted to do.
She engaged in the intellectual pursuits that clearly drove her and
excited her and seemingly, what about her business?
And that is something worth emulating.
Imagine for a moment, what if Ada were alive today?
How would she measure up relative to some of today's female superheroes of tech.
If we put Ada on the stage at the Grays Harbor Celebration of Women in Computing,
what would she talk about?
I suspect she'd be up there like roboticist Manuela Veloso was
this past October,
talking about her latest technical work giving credit to her graduates.
Not like Sheryl Samberg whos take home message was before you go to bed at night
Write down three things that you did well that day.
If we limit ourselves to those figures who are hyped in the press today,
is there anyone better than Ada to serve as the role model?
For today's young women in computing.
As Heigh and Priestly argue, we do have to do a much better job laying out who
the key women in computing have been, and who they are today.
Until then, we have a great gap.
And that gap can actually dissuade women from coming into the field.
Leaders, prominent figures, superheroes,
stand on the shoulders of lots of people below them.
But if people hear only about the superheroes
then they're dissuaded from even trying.
My eye was caught recently by an online listing top ten women in tech.
Which I thought great, I can post this to the ACMW Facebook page.
So I started reading the list and my next thought was why would I post this?
Given the lack of detail presented about those ten women,
there didn't seem to be a regular person on the list.
Everyone on it was young and already worth millions, if not billions.
Founder of company, high level executive, they had the founder
of Lens Technology in Hong Kong, bet365 here in the UK,
Epic Healthcare software, Facebook, YouTube.
I don't mean to take away from the accomplishments of
the women who lead these and other companies.
But let's not pretend they got there on their own.
Most often, they had an extraordinary level of help and mentoring and
coaching that is made invisible.
And that makes it hard for them to be effective role models
because most people do not have access to the kinds of help them had.
A young woman sitting in her classroom today or
banging her head against her recalcitrant bug in her assignment.
Or working hard to get the next product release ready on time is not
likely to be motivated by the story of Marissa Mayer.
She might be motivated by the story of Margret Hamilton,
who developed the onboard flight software for the Apollo space program.
Or Sue Black who did not follow the typical route into the field, but
got her PhD when she was 39.
And today as a rock star for women in computing and
a champion of Britain's role in the history of computing.
Or she would be motivated by the story of Dame Shirley and
the route she took, and the women who worked for
her who had real lives and real careers in computing, and married those together.
As long as those stories are kept quiet there's a dearth of role models for
the majority of women who are in, or might enter, computing.
In this context,
I think Ada continues to serve very effectively as both inspiration and icon.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Hello.
I'm Cheryl Praeger.
It's 200 years ago today since Ada Lovelace was born.
And my career as a mathematician began roughly 150 years
after Ada's if we could describe Ada as having a career.
How is it possible to compare Ada's life with mine or
with those of young people today?
I've spent far more of my time doing mathematics and
science than thinking about them philosophically.
I warmed to Ada Lovelace, her enthusiasm and
her passion for mathematics and I admire the way she grasped opportunities.
For example, the way she optimized her access to top scientific teachers and
scholars.
Ada's life was one of privileged, at least financial privilege and
perhaps without this freedom, she would have had no chance
to develop her passion and her expertise in mathematics.
She had a completely different background from nearly any of us and
the idea of an education provided solely by private tutors.
And also a life in high society is entirely outside of my experience.
So how then can we view Ada Lovelace as a role model?
Indeed this was one of the questions for this panel was should we do so?
And what do we mean by role model?
And is late Ada Lovelace a role model for women mathematicians and
women computer scientists.
Is she someone worthy of imitation and inspirational ideal and example?
Someone we admire and may try to emulate?
What exactly are the changes that matter over these 200 years?
Far more women become mathematicians and
scientists with backgrounds vastly different from Ada's.
For example, I was the first in my family to go to the university.
Both of my parents had to finish their education after ten years at school for
various reasons.
My father's father had died when dad was 14.
My mother's father was unemployed after an extended illness during
the Great Depression.
And this meant that I felt my education through to the university level to be
an amazing privilege.
And I could never regard my education as a right.
So, if we were all to share our stories, we'd have dozens of different life
situations emerging from this session today.
What attracts us and influences us is when we consider someone like Ada Lovelace
is not confined to her life situation,
even though her life story may seen wonderfully romantic and exciting.
It involves what attracts us is more her passion for
new discovery, new understanding of maths and
computing, her engagement with other mathematicians of the time.
And I wonder what Ada would have thought if she lived today.
Having to face many queries from young people seeking to understand
her life choices.
Especially how and why she chose to follow mathematics.
There are many calls on female mathematicians and
scientists to take on service roles, and mentoring roles, and
roles involving support and enrichment for young people.
The details and everyday activities of a life of a scientist or
scholar has changed completely.
But the excitement and passion for
her subject that we see in Ada Lovelace are timeless.
And I could finish here, but I did think that I would say how horrified I was
to see on Saturday morning that the three words used by
the Oxford University Press Office to characterize Ada Lovelace were genius,
adulteress, visionary, how sexist I thought.
Thankfully the description was changed and you can look it up yourselves.
But because many of us on occasions have heard statements that somehow
belittle or diminish contributions.
It felt unnervingly inappropriate that this description appeared on
the Oxford University website in relation to Ada Lovelace and
I am very glad that it was changed quickly.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Changed quickly and
the senior people responsible for
that unit here are all falling over themselves to apologize.
>> [LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE] >> [LAUGH]
>> So we've heard a lot of stories over
the last couple days, not just about Ada, about other people as well.
And storytelling is a key part of how we understand women's
positions in STEM, both historically and in the present day.
Too often though the stories that we are told about women
do not just explore their achievements but
are also often at pains to discuss their imperfections, whether perceived or real.
Ada Lovelace often comes in for
a bit of character assassination as we've just heard.
In another piece on the BBC recently, we learned that she was manipulative and
aggressive, a drug addict, a gambler and an adulteress.
That piece also described her in two words, flawed or fraud.
>> [LAUGH] >> Elsewhere, we're told that she didn't
understand calculus as if that is both unusual and a critical personality flaw.
>> [LAUGH] >> Marie Curie suffers the same fate.
In the documentary, The Genius of Marie Curie within the first five minutes,
we are told that her entire life is defined and
the word was defined by her affair with the married Paul Langevin.
Not apparently defined by her discoveries of polonium and radium or her
work during the first World War driving an X-ray unit around field hospitals.
During In Our Time's episode on the Curies, we are told that she is
an appalling role model for women who want to go into science.
Because she confirms the notion that you can't be a normal woman,
and go into science.
Never mind that the entire concept of normal is problematic or
perhaps not all women in STEM would want to self identify as normal anyway.
>> [LAUGH] >> Discussions
of Roslind Franklin follow the same pattern.
I was sitting in the car with my husband a few weeks ago listening to NPR and
playwright Anna Ziegler and actress Christian Bush,
talked about the play photograph 51.
And from that interview,
we learned that Franklin was not the nicest person in the world.
But in mitigation we are also told that she's not terrible the entire time.
>> [LAUGH] >> Unfortunately,
we learned nothing about Franklin's actual science.
It seems that we cannot just learn about these women's triumphs.
We're not allowed to focus solely on their work, their discoveries,
their inventions, like we do with most famous men.
Instead, these women must be brought down a peg or
two through discussion of their flaws, which are used as a way to
undermine the increasing status that they had gained from their success.
The modern narrative form for
discussing the achievements of women hinges on a false balance.
A woman cannot just be brilliant, she must also be flawed and
we must hear about those flaws in detail
to balance out any apathy ideas we get from her brilliance.
Sadly, this is no surprise.
Research shows that we judge women more harshly than we judge men.
So for example, traits like decisiveness that make good leaders
out of man are interpreted negatively as bossiness in women.
And rarely do commentators question the accuracy of usual male interpretations
of women's personalities in the light of what we know about subconscious bias.
Was Lovelace aggressive or did she just speak her mind?
Was Franklin unpleasant or was she decisive and direct?
Was Curie obsessed or was she just focused?
The exception that proves the rule is Florence Nightingale,
the Lady with the Lamp, the saintly nurse who saved lives.
Instead this devout humble woman is the desired appetite for
woman in STEM not only was she supportive of traditional gender roles
her work as a nurse actually embodies gender stereotype.
Conveniently, popular accounts of Nightingale
often ignore completely her statically work.
Her invention of the polar area graph, and her use of the infographic
as a companing tool to lobby government for change in soldiers barracks and
hospitals because these are all decidedly unfeminine behaviors.
These distortions matter.
We are all creatures who depend on story to make sense of our world.
The stories that we hear about others, the stories we tell about ourselves, influence
how we understand the world around us and how we think about our place in it.
Stories that focus on the expectation of perfection in female role models
could undermine self-confidence and encourage impostor syndrome.
If we only ever read highly polished accounts of women who seem like saints,
we start to develop unrealistic expectations about how we
should experience out own professional and personal lives.
When we compare our lived experience to those edited highlights,
of course our rough and ready lives come off worse.
How can we possibly live up to those expectations?
But when successful women are portrayed negatively that every personality flaw and
mistake poured over at length, that also affects how we relate to them.
When we focus on a woman's flaws or mistakes, we signal that no matter how
successful she is if she is not that saint, she isn't worthy of our respect.
It becomes difficult to look up to someone with such imperfections and
instead of being a role model, she becomes a warning.
How we talk about female role models also affects how we assess the accuracy of
the narrative surrounding them about their achievements and legacy.
We might think that the perfect female role model cannot
possible be real she must have had male help and
maybe she lied or been misrepresented or been delusional or
we might think that her imperfections out weighted her
achievements making her unsuitable as a role model.
These narratives, these biased narratives, effect how we conceptualize ourselves.
The focus on female perfection or
imperfection damages our ability to make mistakes as a natural part of learning.
When individual women are seen as representing all women,
our mistakes are seen as proof of gender based deficiencies.
They make us less willing to experiment, to fail, to learn.
Because we start to feel that our mistakes make us complicit in
bolstering other people's prejudices.
Over time, the stories we read about others change the stories we tell to
ourselves about what we've done, who we are, what we're capable of.
And these are the most important stories of all,
because they define our actions in the present.
They define how we think of ourselves and how we locate ourselves in society.
This doesn't mean that we should never examine women's personalities and
mistakes, but that we need to do so very carefully.
We first need to ask is the criticism fair?
Some of Lovelace's critics come from a point of view of wanting to see women
alienated from technology and computer science.
So they will do anything to undermine her position.
Some criticism comes from misinterpretation or
misreading of the evidence.
Some seems to come from the critic's own dislike of Lovelace's personality.
But whatever their motivations, we need to understand the source of their criticisms
to assess the impact of any agenda behind it.
We have to ask is the criticism relevant.
Was Lovelace's affair with her tutor relevant to her work
on the analytical engine?
Or her relationship with John Cross?
How was that relevant?
Are either of sufficient importance
to her legacy that she should be headlined as an adulteress?
If the criticism is relevant, is it being blown out of proportion and given more and
given more weight than it deserves.
Carries's year long relationship with the married Paul longevin might be relevant,
in so far that it provided ammunition for her academic opponent.
But did it have a significant enough impact on her work
to warrant being sold as the defining event of her life?
So we have to understand the historical context as well of the critiqued
behavior or attitude rather than judge solely by modern standards.
Nightingale's support for what we would now call gender stereotypes
is not a sign of her intellectual failure.
It's indicative of the societal values that she was brought up with.
How we talk about women matters and
it's part of our broader journey towards equality.
Because true equality is the right for a woman to have a personality,
any personality and not be castigated for it.
It is the right to make mistakes, both at home and at work, and
be given the grace of forgiveness.
True equality is the right to suck at something.
To find calculus hard and yet
still have our achievements judged on their own merits.
Thank you very much.
>> [APPLAUSE] I say a very big thank you to all the speakers and
what important messages and thoughts,
and you also did it in such short time so thank you.
I would like to have a few questions and comments etc.
But can we all be mindful of time that some people have airplanes and
trains and buses to catch.
So please.
>> Hi, I just wanna say first that I really enjoyed this discussion about
contemporary feminist issues, and
I would have even enjoyed a larger symposium in that.
And a question for you, Valerie, really related to what
you said about exceptional role models being sometimes
expiring and I wanna ask what is the ACM doing in that matter?
>> [LAUGH] >> I'm so
glad you asked a question I can answer.
So are we good.
So ACM tell me so ACM >> Yeah ACMW.
>> Does a lot and in particular supports ACMW.
We have three main programs.
We do regional celebrations of women in computing's.
These are typically 100 to 200 person conferences
that are typically one day events, easy for
people to get to focused a lot on students to give them an opportunity to gather and
create community, typically a mix of research presentations, workshops, panels.
That's one big part of what we do.
We have about 25 of those around the world at the moment.
We also have ACMW student chapters and professional chapters and
we're working on more content for
those and being clear about what the reasons
are why in general women in computing group ought to be in an ACMW chapter.
And the other thing we do is scholarships for
women computer science students to attend research conferences.
And unlike most of the funding that's available,
we do not require the student to present.
So we feel very strongly that this is pipeline.
It's an opportunity for an undergrad to go to a conference and
think about undergraduate school.
An opportunity for a masters student to go to a conference and think about going for
a PhD, and early PhD students to help find their research community.
So those are our three main areas.
So if you go to women dot ACM dot org and click join, you'll join
36,000 people on our distribution list and get our monthly newsletter.
I wanna ask about the on [INAUDIBLE] from a very practical perspective.
So being academic as we know is you carry many, many heads.
So I don't know how many heads I am having.
But one I don't have to carry, and none of my neighbors have to carry.
Don't [INAUDIBLE], we just do what we do.
And I'm worried that all this stuff [INAUDIBLE] is actually
[INAUDIBLE] female [INAUDIBLE] even more challenging,
because definitely everything that we do and on top of it we have another job.
And I actually met somebody, I mean I [INAUDIBLE] listen [INAUDIBLE],
and what she didn't get, you think it was yeah, you don't work for
him but for all the technical work.
But what is she doing for women?
So [INAUDIBLE],
you also have to at the same time [INAUDIBLE] you have to be an activist.
Making it just harder for women to succeed because we put so
much emphasis on this whole.
>> Can I answer that?
>> Yeah who wants to dive in?
>> I wanna say that within the context of ACM, I'm very, very clear that ACMW does
not own the women in computing problem or the solution.
ACM as professional organization of computer scientists has to take that on.
I think men can be role models.
I think men can be mentors.
I think men have to be mentors and coaches because there aren't enough women.
And I think women, in the same way that we should have the right to suck at things,
we should also have the right to say, I'm focusing on my work.
So I think you raise a really important point.
Some women really want to get out there and be in the trenches about this, and
not everybody does and we shouldn't think badly of the women
who don't want to actively engage in this.
And I just want to say one other thing because Linda Hardmer had her hand up.
That I should mention that ACM has the ACM Europe council and we do have ACMW Europe.
>> Can I just say, you and I think all the men and
indeed all the people in the audience can also help.
By taking that burden away from women and also speaking up when you hear someone say
that is now why should they be expected to do that just because they are a woman.
Sorry Sue.
>> I was goning to say something actually very similar and
I think that you identified two different roles.
The first one is that of role model.
Well when we're talking about a role model,
a role model is a person that we admire and want to emulate.
Women don't actually have to do anything but
their work in order to be a role model.
And it shouldn't be on women's shoulders to put themselves forward and
say no, I'm a role model, do what I do.
That should come as a sort of side effect as it were from the work that they do.
You also mentioned the word activist and
this is where I think the idea that women are solely responsible for
engaging with sexism and with creating new role models,
and dealing with all of these issues is fundamentally problematic.
That men need to actually say well they're going to get involved,
and get organizing, because quite often I understand
the perspective of women who feel like that always the woman on the committee.
They're always the woman who has to sort of stand up and represent.
And a lot of that burden can be eased by men saying,
we will help you organize or we will take on organizing
roles that is a part of what needs to happen.
And I think the more men do that, and I see this a lot with Ada Lovelace day that
a lot of men will get involved with organizing events for women and
about women in STEM.
And there's absolutely no reason why more men can't do that.
>> Thank you Linda, so more comments to inside what
Valerie was saying but also what Sue was saying.
That's ACM has the senior membership titles of such as Failworth Scientist and
it would be nice if all of the male fellows starting with those
were to nominate a female member of ACM to become a fellow and
that would really help to give a lot of visibility to RN putting work.
>> I see a black jacket.
>> That's me.
>> That's your black jacket yeah.
>> Thank you very much indeed for a very stimulating debate.
The idea of role models, it's been around a long while, a long long while.
I mean, I'm from this country and I think the situation to science particularly
in academic levels is pretty bad in terms of general distribution and
certainly mathematics is pretty bad and certainly physics is pretty bad.
And this is despite a lot of really good interventions,
role models, initiatives, sharing how important careers are.
And I just wondered whether we need a bit more pressure, and in terms
of thinking about the general distribution of research grants or whatever.
And I don't know, I just wonder what you think about that.
Because it seems the situation has not changed very much
despite really good work done across the world.
And I just wondered if you had some examples where you've
actually seen the change and the expectation of women, thank you.
>> I don't know if it's a really good example, but
I've been hearing about Athena SWAN- >> Yeah, Athena SWAN.
>> Programs here.
Research councils are requiring some kind of Athena SWAN certification.
And then when I talk with women around this country, I've had a lot of
comments about this being an additional unfair burden on women.
Than men to be on the committees that prepared the nomination.
>> Could I just enter in and say actually one of the things I know.
Sometimes, it does happen with Athena SWAN is that female colleagues get to fill in
the documentation, which is part of the issue that's being raised already.
But I do think that there are major changes elsewhere.
Maybe not in concise maybe not in maths,
which you can see across different European countries in higher education,
in politics, in public administration, in different areas.
And that it's worthwhile actually thinking about how those work.
Because I do think myself that significant cultural change is the most effective
way possible but it's very difficult to do that from a high degree of minoritization.
Within, you don't have the heft to create the cultural change, so it is about
the changing behavior of the majority to invest in that cultural change.
But I think that the situation in other areas, proportionally speaking and
in terms of change in the last 10 years and
the last 15 years has been significantly better than what you're describing.
So I think there may be a particular issue here with a STEM.
>> Actually I think it's a core point that it is cultural change.
So if you look at physics, the proportion of women going into physics
hasn't changed in 30 years despite a lot of interventions.
But the issue is a lot of the interventions
are sort of single point interventions.
They're projects that maybe last a few months or
a year but they aren't dealing with the fundamental problem.
So we're talking about cultural problems,
we're taking about structural problems, process issues.
And I think we're starting now to see research that showing some
real promise in terms of understanding what those structural problems are.
And its even down to things like how we word job ads.
That there are sort of certain ways of wording job ads that put women off and
attract men.
Things about how we talk about STEM careers to young girls.
So evidence that young girls respond better to adjectives than verbs, and
this quite interesting work that's being done,
that means that we've got a better evidence based for our interventions.
>> And I'd like to draw the parallel with, this is gonna be slightly odd,
but with anyone who needs to change their weight.
Where the idea of a fad diet, that you do a temporary change and
then you fix the problem.
That's the kind of interventions we've been doing.
It's about permanent change, it's about understanding kind of the nutrition,
if you like and then applying that on a permanent basis.
I think we are making progress to understand what those permanent changes
need to be.
>> Thank you, I've realized this is very interesting, and
I would love to go on but I'm aware of time and I don't want to lose people.
So I think it's time to wrap up.
I'd just like to say,
I was really struck by the recurrence of the concept of stories.
Each of you in some point talked about how we talk about women, and
that's certainly something I'm going to remember, and it was about the details.
Definitely about the details.
But only one person mentioned the possibility of purchasing an Ada Lovelace
costume.
[LAUGH] And I won't forget that.
Before I hand over to Ursula who is going to I think conclude things.
I want to say something that would just possibly a bit dangerous in light of this
discussion but I wanted to say a special thank you to Ursula for organizing this,
you are my role model.
>> [LAUGH]
[APPLAUSE]
>> And you're a heroic one as well.
>> Well, thank you to the panel.
Thank you, everyone.
I don't want to stand too long standing here talking but
we need to say thank you to a fine lot of people who are sitting over there.
The student helpers, the staff helpers, and where's Jayne?
Jayne's gone.
Renate, Jane, Renate So thank you all for making this such a success.
You've seen them all buzzing around in blue t-shirts doing all sorts of things.
I've got two of my post-docs sitting there.
Never was in the job description.
>> [LAUGH] >> For Vasilis to be.
the complete master of audio.
I don't think it ever was in the job description for
Gabriella to be tweeter-in-chief.
But thank you very much and a particular thank you to the presence of
you in the middle there Sarah Baldwin, who has been on the end of countless emails.
[APPLAUSE] In June.
>> and somebody found that wasn't in her job description either that she was going
to organize a conference for 300 people and
deal with everything from Balliol seating plans.
Nick Wood helped us surveil a seating plan to the
the hire of coat racks.
There you are. That's it.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> So
we have had a wonderful party, we've had a wonderful party for Ada Lovelace.
We also have a legacy for all this.
Here in Oxford we have a remarkable history of programming research,
computer science research.
Two Turing Award winners Tony Hall and Dana Scott.
The Turing award is often described as the Nobel Prize of Computer Science.
We have fabulous computing archives in the Bodleian and not just the Lovelac
Byron archives,but the Strachey archives, the Landing archives.
We're starting an initiative to do far more work on those archives to draw in
together a community of scholars but picking up on what we've been talking
about today, not just the nerdy sides of it, but the cultural sides of it as well.
The greater influence on science, and our founding funders if you like have been
Clay Mathematics Institute, Nick Woodhouse.
The president of the Clay Mathematics Institute is sitting there who've funded
this marvelous digitization of Ada Lovelace's mathematics,
which you're going to be seeing online after Christmas.
So thank you all very much for coming.
We've all had a fabulous time and
see you next time.
>> [APPLAUSE]
