It has become clear that many of my female friends in tech really do feel disempowered. They feel invisible, lacking in confidence, and unsure how to compete for attention with the men around them.

Then I see the stupid puerile misogynistic manner with which some of the more powerful voices in the tech community – some of them repeat offenders – treat women, and it makes me very cross indeed. The objectification of women is bad enough when it's done by the media, but when it's done by a conference organiser or tech commentator or famous tech publication, what message does it send? Nothing but "You will never be taken seriously, but we might take notice of you if you're hot."

I signed up to the Ada Lovelace Day pledge long enough ago that my name's fallen off the front page, but I kind of forgot about it, so I didn't really have a plan about who to write about. There's Ada herself, of course, who is a fascinating character, to be sure. Just the kind of woman whose life is long overdue for one of those luscious television mini series (paging the BBC…)

But I figured, as fascinating as she is, it's not going to be hard to find out about her today, so I wanted to write about someone else. But I struggled to think of a good example. There was Hedy Lamarr, of course (whose scientific breakthroughs I first learned about through Dignifying Science), but I wanted to find someone a little closer to home. Then it occurred to me that, since I'd be visiting Bletchley Park, the female code-breakers of Station X might be the thing to focus on. Only, we were whizzed through the place so quickly, and there was so much to look at, that I completely forgot all about it. Luckily, there's a great history of them written by the British Computer Society, who, it turns out, are sponsoring a one-day conference being held later this year. Well done them, it's about time, eh?

You can read many other Ada Lovelace Day posts here, or buy searching for the AdaLovelace09 tag on blogs, or ALD09 on Twitter.