ReadWriteWeb

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the world's first computer programmer and to share inspiring stories about women working in science, technology and math. Surely some of the most significant technical work done by women since this day last year includes the creation of what is said to be the fastest-growing social network in history, Google Plus.

Launched on June 28th and just opened to the public at large late last month, Google Plus is a feature-rich social network with variable privacy and sharing settings at the core of its experience. Who were the women involved in building such a big, important technology? We asked, on Google Plus, and were told about twenty two of them profiled below. They are an incredibly accomplished group of people and a great source of inspiration for young women interested in science and technology - or for anyone else who could use some powerful role models. You should share this list of women with the girls in your life, though, that's what Ada Lovelace Day is all about.

There is no law against women driving in Saudi Arabia. That doesn't keep women who drive from being arrested, though, as the case of Manal Al-Sharif proves. Instead of laws, the kingdom's women are forbidden from driving due to fatwas, or religious opinions, rendered by ultra-conservative clerics of the influential Wahhabi sect.

Today, those fatwas were challenged by women across Saudi Arabia in a campaign called Women2Drive; challenged and, thanks to social media, witnessed in real time.

I did not think of the very obvious when writing a post yesterday about Jive Software's new members to its board of directors.

The men Jive chose are all talented, intelligent and well-respected people. They have risen to the top of their fields. But where are the women?

If you're in the early stages of building a startup company and are interested in raising your first investment money for it, you may be interested to learn about, develop relationships with and be educated by some of the top women acting as angel investors in tech.

Who are these women? That's a question being collaboratively answered on the Q&A site Quora, with participation from people like Tara Hunt, Jason Calacanis and so far six other people with experience in the field. The group has assembled a good list - so we looked up all the people named on Twitter and created the following Twitter list that you can follow to keep up with all these women in one handy place: Top Female Angels. The group's most recent Tweets can be seen embedded in a widget below.

The technology press is full of stories of heroic men. In the startup economy, they often take the form of brave men who quit steady day jobs to join crazy startups. That's an inspiring kind of story; I wrote about Louis Gray doing that earlier this week and really enjoyed sharing his news. (How Chris Messina Got a Job at Google is a related example.)

But what about women who make that kind of leap? There needs to be more stories told like that. I put out a call on Twitter and Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times said she too wants to tell more stories about brave women in technology. We live in an incredible time of cultural, economic and political change made possible by changing technology. That technology is being driven in many cases by women - so whose stories would you suggest we write about here on this blog?

I spent much of the week at OSCON, which served in part as a very visual reminder for something that is always on the back of my mind: the absence of women in tech. While women make up 25% of those who work in the tech industry, they comprise only 1% of those in open source. And wandering around the halls of the Portland Convention Center with thousands of men and a handful of women, I was both frustrated and depressed by the statistic and its reality.

A story last week in the San Jose Mercury News highlights, as the title suggests, "the dearth of women in tech." The article begins with a description of InDinero founder and Y Combinator alum Jessica Mah: "I just wasn't sure if Jessica Mah was for real," writes Scott Duke Harris, admitting that he probably wouldn't have had this impression if Jessica were Jesse. He admits it's a sort of "gender profiling" - the expectation that girls can't (or are less apt, perhaps) to found tech companies.

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) released their report "Women in IT: The Facts" today, examining the current state of affairs for women working in IT and computing careers. The report addresses some of the reasons why women leave the industry at staggering rates and what companies can do to attract and retain them.

The NCWIT Summit on Women and IT is being held in Portland, Oregon this week and is providing an opportunity for its members to share resources and strategize on how to inspire girls to choose computing careers and support women to stay in those careers. NCWIT (National Center for Women in Information Technology) is a coalition of over 200 corporations, academic institutions, non profits, and governmental agencies working to address some of these challenges. NCWIT supports efforts within the workforce, in universities, and in K-12 education in order to increase women's participation in IT - in the classroom, in startups, and in corporations.

From guest panels about the challenges women face in the technology sector, to interviews about the challenges they face in a male dominated work environment, this collection of videos shines a light on women in tech.

The list includes Caterina Fake explaining how she became co-founder of Hunch and Flickr, as well as Dianne Marsh speaking about the under representation of women in computer sciences. Also included is a video about a data center a women built, and an interview with a college student majoring in computer science. Best of all is the top video She's Geeky, which is about an all-female unconference facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin. (ReadWriteWeb's Mobile Summit on May 7 is going to be facilitated by Hamlin.)