DEV Community

Antoinette Maria
Antoinette Maria

Posted on

1

Can you name a female equivalent to Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?

This question came up while I was doing some reading for a presentation I had to give at work about the gender gap in tech. I was hard pressed to answer this question off of the top of my head and I'm sure if I employ a little bit of Google-foo I could dig up a few. For example, one of the cofounders of Cisco was a woman (I can't say how technical she was). So, can you name a woman who would be in the same league as tech founders like Mark, Steve, or Bill?

Note: Sheryl Sandberg doesn't count. The Yahoo CEO doesn't count. Let it be known that I am aware that Steve Wozniak was actually the technical mind behind Apple, but I say Steve Jobs because of the social relevance of his name in this particular instance.

Here is my entry. The founder of LMG Security is a woman named Sherri Davidoff. Author of a couple of technical books. Over a decade of experience in information security. Highly technical.

Image of Timescale

🚀 pgai Vectorizer: SQLAlchemy and LiteLLM Make Vector Search Simple

We built pgai Vectorizer to simplify embedding management for AI applications—without needing a separate database or complex infrastructure. Since launch, developers have created over 3,000 vectorizers on Timescale Cloud, with many more self-hosted.

Read more

Top comments (8)

Collapse
 
newtorob profile image
Robert Newton •

Barbara Liskov... She is one hell of a Computer scientist and a programmer. Professor Liskov also teaches Computer science at MIT.

She has been awarded an ACM Fellowship, A Von Neumann medal and a Turing Award for he long list of achievements and contributions to the field.

from quora . quora.com/Who-are-some-of-the-best...

Collapse
 
antoinette0x53 profile image
Antoinette Maria •

I can name several women who are amazing computer scientists. I meant specifically in the realm of tech business.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern • • Edited

There, sadly, aren't a lot of women who fit this general mold. A few current tech founders that come to mind as women who could grow into this class:

  • Meredith Perry, founder of UBeam
  • Shivani Siroya, founder of Tala
  • Anne Wojcicki, founder of 23andMe
  • Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos (but that ship might have sailed 🙃)
Collapse
 
david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy •

Ada Lovelace - first 'programmer'
Grace Hopper - Mother of COBOL
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller - PH.D. in Computer Science
Elizabeth Feinler - her team created TLDs (.com, .net, .gov) for the early web
Mary Lou Jepsen - Founder of OLPC

Collapse
 
caseyreeddev profile image
Casey Reed •

The first name that comes to mind for me is Grace Hopper. She wasn't necessarily an entrepreneur on the level of the men you listed, but I'd count her as a "founder" of some sort.

Collapse
 
antoinette0x53 profile image
Antoinette Maria •

I would put her up there with Alan Turing as a pioneer/trailblazer in the field, less so of a tech business leader.

Collapse
 
derkwola profile image
derk-wola •

Ada Lovelace and it's over.

Collapse
 
antoinette0x53 profile image
Antoinette Maria •

She isn't exactly...an equivalent...