You can’t tear my 80-year-old mum away from her tech. Whether it’s her phone, her watch or her iPad – she’s always plugged into something. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. 

My mother first became enmeshed in the tech world long before the term digital native was coined. Prior to a long career as a teacher, she was in charge of the ‘machine room’ in a local council in Sydney. 

These were the days when computers were massive and could fill a room. We’re talking the 1960s. Running these early computers was often seen as clerical or administrative work and therefore ‘women’s work’. 

As a result, women were the ones operating keypunch machines, feeding cards into mainframes, writing COBOL routines, analysing the results and troubleshooting system errors.

Turns out, women were the first IT guys. So where did they all go?  

Many of them were sent home upon getting married. At the time, workplaces in Australia could legally march a newly married woman out the door arguing she didn’t need a job anymore.

Jean Jennings and Frances Bilas preparing the computer for Demonstration Day in February 1946. University Archives and Records Center/University of Pennsylvania

Then, in the 70s and 80s, while these same women were primarily at home raising kids, the field shifted from a female-dominated one to a male one.

As computers became smaller and more commercially viable, they moved from corporate offices into our homes. The burgeoning PC culture was marketed almost exclusively to men as they were the ones with the time and money for this expensive new hobby. 

Computer companies created ads showing fathers and sons tinkering with electronic gadgets and early personal computers, curating the idea that tech was a masculine pursuit.

Around the same time, computer science degree programs expanded rapidly across universities. As men entered the field, it gained prestige and higher salaries. In turn, this saw a surge in male students studying in this field.

Amid this cultural restructuring, the number of women majoring in computer science began to drop sharply. It peaked in the mid-80s then declined over the next three decades. 

“Don’t just invite women in, invite them back. And this time, give them the means and the reasons to stay.”

Now, as the sector faces a global skills shortage, there’s a huge push to correct the gender imbalance. Part of the solution might be to recognise, and champion, its female roots. Tell the whole history of tech and not simply the chapter recently dominated by men.

Many people would be surprised to learn the first computer program is widely thought to have been written by a woman. 

In the 1840s, English mathematician Ada Lovelace worked with inventor Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine. Babbage is often lauded as the father of the computer, yet it was Lovelace who wrote what is now recognised as the first machine algorithm.

Fast forward 100 years to the women hired during World War II to calculate ballistics trajectories by hand and crack enemy codes. 

Six of these women went on to become the sole programmers for the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) – widely considered to be the great grandfather (or should we say, grandmother?) of modern computers. And yet, their names are not household ones.

There’s a trick here that tech recruiters are missing.

Perhaps they should focus less on convincing women to join the tech revolution and instead recognise they were among its pioneers. Don’t just invite women in, invite them back. And this time, give them the means and the reasons to stay.

Women leave the tech sector at much higher rates than men. These days it’s not because they get married and are automatically sacked. Instead, they report the industry’s heavily gendered culture makes it difficult to build careers in it.

And the stats back it up.

According to the World Economic Forum, just 8.6 percent of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) roles in 2026 are held by women. And they occupy fewer than one in five Chief Information Officer positions. 

The latest Women in Tech survey found that 65 percent of female tech founders had been told they’d raise more money for their venture if they were men. That same study found 43 percent of women working in the sector had been sexually harassed at work. Less than half reported it.

Stats gathered by WomenHack show 50 percent of women in tech leave the sector by the age of 35, just when their careers should be taking off. Just under half of them (48%) cite lack of advancement as the main reason why. Fifty-six percent also cite workplace culture.

Building tech’s future – and workforce – must include remembering its past. When my mother programmed those huge machines decades ago, she wasn’t stepping into a man’s world, she was helping build an entirely new industry. 

If the tech sector wants to solve its talent crisis, it needs to stop treating women as latecomers and start honouring them as the pioneers they have always been. Let’s rewrite the script and build an environment in which future generations of women don’t just enter tech, they stay and lead it.