Look at your phone. Open your favorite app. Ask your virtual assistant a question. That’s technology you use every single day—but how often do you think about the women who made it possible?
Behind the scenes of our most-used devices, platforms, and tools are female minds who’ve shaped everything from how we communicate to how we navigate. Yet, most people still don’t know their names.
Take Dr. Radia Perlman. Nicknamed the “Mother of the Internet,” she invented the Spanning Tree Protocol, a foundational piece of network design that makes modern web connections possible. Without her work, the internet wouldn’t function the way it does today—but her name rarely appears in textbooks or mainstream conversations.
Then there’s Susan Kare, the artist-turned-designer who created the original icons for the Apple Macintosh. If you’ve ever clicked a trash can, smiled at a happy Mac face, or seen a command key, you’ve used her work. She brought personality to digital interfaces—at a time when tech was seen as cold and mechanical.
And what about the tools we use for remote collaboration? Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM, pushed hard for cloud computing and AI infrastructure long before they became buzzwords. Her leadership helped make enterprise tech accessible for remote work—something we now take for granted.
Don’t forget the rise of health tech either. Ida Tin, founder of the period tracking app Clue, popularized the term “FemTech” and brought menstrual health into the digital spotlight. Her work turned something taboo into a normalized, data-driven part of women's healthcare.
Yet, the irony remains—many of these tools, used most often by women, weren’t designed with women in mind… until women got involved. From UI/UX to mobile health to AI-driven calendars, female creators are making everyday tech more intuitive, inclusive, and yes—human.
Still, systemic bias lingers. Venture capital still skews male, meaning women have to fight harder to fund the ideas they’re uniquely positioned to design. But that hasn’t stopped them. They’re crowdfunding, bootstrapping, and collaborating to build tools that solve actual problems—not just flashy ones.
These innovators aren’t coding for vanity metrics or ego. They’re building solutions—quietly, powerfully—that reshape how we live, work, and connect. They're not in your pocket because of fame. They're there because they earned it.
So the next time you swipe, click, or tap—remember her. She’s in your code, in your design, in your functionality. You just didn’t see her—until now.
