Media Watch: Great Story, Anti-Male Headline

A great story about a young woman who was instrumental in the U.S. space program appeared last week in The New York Times.

Unfortunately, it was prefaced with an anti-male editorialized headline by the editors.  The headline: Before Computer Science Became a Boys’ Club, Margaret Hamilton Wrote the Code

In a stinging rebuke to the headline writer, the first reader to comment on the article knew Margaret Hamilton and posted this: "In one conversation I had with her, she said when her boss at Draper Labs promoted her, he warned her to be aware that some of the men might question why she got the job. Her boss said she was being promoted because she was the best. In the end, she said none of the men ever questioned her or caused any issues."

Computer science is not today a "boys' club," never was a boys' club. It always was, and is, a discipline in which males' superior spatial ability prompts computer scientists to be 80% male, 20% female.  We applaud and thank the pioneering female computer scientists, like Delores Johnson, Margaret Hamilton, Hedy Lamarr, and Ada Lovelace. But we don't have to disparage men to do so. Photo: Margaret Hamilton