National WebMistress Day: 5 Amazing Women Who Changed The Tech World

National WebMistress Day, which is observed on August 26 every year, aims to recognize women in web development and celebrate their contributions to the field.

The term came into being in 1995 when Kate Valentine secured the domain name WebMistress.com. A lot has changed in the tech world since, with thousands of women now part of the web development workforce.

However, that doesn't take away the significance of WebMistress Day, since women remain highly underrepresented in many tech-related jobs like software engineering, where they comprise only 14% of the workforce, and computer science, of which only 25% are held by women.

Though the percentage of employed women across all job sectors in the U.S. has grown to 47% over the past decades, only 34.4% of positions in the five largest tech companies on the planet — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — are occupied by women.

That said, we should encourage more women to take up roles not only in web development but in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) in general. One way of doing it is by introducing them to the amazing women who made a huge impact on the tech world. Below are some of them. (Courtesy: Computer History, Techjuice, NASA, Internet Hall of Fame and National Women's History Museum)

1- Ada Lovelace- No list about the greatest women in tech will ever be complete without Lovelace, who is known as the world's first computer programmer. In her notes, she wrote about the Analytical Engine that could follow a series of simple instructions or a program to perform a complex calculation. Every second Tuesday in October is known as Ada Lovelace Day, which aims to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM.

2- Sister Mary Kenneth Keller- She is the first female to have earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Keller founded the computer language BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), which soon became a popular add-on when IBM launched the first computer for home use.

3- Katherine Johnson- She was so good at maths that she was called a "computer." After graduating from West Virginia State University, Johnson went on to work at the all-black computing section for the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics. She then became a member of NASA, and it was her calculations that made space exploration possible. She resolved the paths which allowed NASA's spacecraft and astronauts to orbit Earth and land on the Moon.

4- Elizabeth Feinler- In 1960, Feinler joined SRI International as an information scientist leading the Information Research Department. In 1972, she became a part of Dr. Douglas Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center, where her work on the Internet started. It was her who pioneered and took charge of the first ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and then the Defense Data Network (DDN) under a contract with the Department of Defense. Both of these early networks were the precursors of the Internet we know today.

5- Hedy Lamarr- Though she's an actress, her contributions to society aren't limited to the arts. In fact, she created Secret Communication System, a frequency hopping device, with the help of composer and inventor George Antheil. The device was used to guide torpedoes to their respective targets during the war and later became the basis for many modern-day inventions, such as WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.