Invitation to flame war it may be in some quarters, but there’s no escaping the reality that women are under represented in technology.
Stack Overflow’s 2015 Developer survey found just 5.8 per cent of its 26 000 respondents had two X chromosomes.
Small in number they may be, but many of the leading voices in technology today are women. And organisations such as The Ada Initiatives and Anita Borg Institute are going out of their way to mentor, educate and otherwise encourage women in technology.
Here’s our list of some of the top women in technology on Twitter. We decided to avoid the obvious ones. Suggestions for other hidden gems more than welcome…
@Dr_Black
A veteran campaigner for more recognition and support for women in technology, Sue Black is not only a noted academic Computer Scientist, but as founder of BCSWomen, the campaign to save Bletchley Park and author of the fastest crowd funded book in history, she’s well worth your attention on Twitter.
@Caterina
Flickr co-founder, Findery founder and all-out tech entrepreneur, Caterina Fake’s followers can expect Tweets on anything from travel to feminism, all via insights into everything Internet.
@6Gems
When coder Kimberley Bryant was starting out, she found herself doubly isolated – there weren’t many women around but there were even fewer black ones. With her own career up and running, Bryant founded @BlackGirlsCode to help pre-teen girls learn about programming at the time they’re beginning to think about what they’d like to do when they grow up.
@JuliaAngwin
Mathematician-turned-journalist, Julia Angwin covers all things security, surveillance and privacy related online.
@DBNess
Former database analytics engineer Vanessa Hurst is CEO @codemontage, co-founder of @girldevelopit and @writespeakcode. Followers can expect plenty of talk on open source, coding, data and tech talks/education.
@rockchick322004
Developer evangelist at salesforce.com, Mary Scotton is all about bringing non-programmers into the development fold and mentoring women and disadvantaged communities interested in learning about tech.
@hopefulcyborg
Self-described polyglot programmer weirdo, Angelina Fabbro’s a former Mozillan. Expect travel pics, guitar picks and plenty of things like links to her talks on JS for OS X automation.
@LindsayT
Engineer and software architect Lindsay Tabas describes herself as a Product and UX Designer, Startup Swiss Army Knife and Customer Experience Strategist. Which is pretty much exactly what you can expect from her Tweets.
@Lieke2208
Lieke Boon’s all about Ruby on Rails, Python and getting more women and girls involved. Her blog, http://www.codepancake.com/ is a great source of tips and resources for anyone starting out in development.
@AdasList
As the name suggests, this is the Twitter account for an online forum for women working in science and technology. Whether it’s tips, information on job openings or calls for submissions to conferences, you’ll find it here.