Lynn Conway was a trans woman in tech — and underappreciated for decades after helping launch the computing revolution

Lynn Conway may hold the record for the longest delay between being unfairly fired and receiving an apology for it. In 1968, IBM – a company that now covers its logo with a rainbow flag every June for Pride Month – fired Conway, who died on June 9, 2024, at age 86, when he expressed his intention to make the transition. IBM finally apologized to the now famous computer expert, but just 52 years laterwhen Conway was 82 years old.

Although Conway’s start as a trans woman while at IBM was inauspicious, she quickly found a new job under her post-transition name and identity at the prestigious Xerox PARC and for many years kept the fact that she was trans from her employers to avoid being unfairly fired again. By doing so, Conway escaped becoming a target of the sensationalistic and harmful news coverage about trans people who dominated mainstream media in the 20th century. At the same time, however, this meant that she was also unable to tell her story fully.

Even today, mainstream media coverage of trans people often positions them as unfortunate victims or questions the right to exist of trans people no way.

Through his innovative work in chip design, Conway joined a long line of distinguished women in computing in the 20th century, which transformed computers into the powerful and flexible tools they are today. Conway’s co-invention of large-scale integration, or VLSI, pushed chip design into the future. VLSI allowed recording circuits on the surface of a computer chip to be as space-efficient as possible by ensuring the maximum number of transistors on a chip.

Maximizing the number of transistors on a chip meant that the resulting computer using that chip could be as fast and powerful as possible. For this innovation, Conway received industry and academic recognition. However, this recognition took a long time.

The ‘Conway Effect’

Like many other women in computing, Conway felt that she had been denied due credit because of the way her male co-inventor of VLSI Carver Mead, was repeatedly given more credit and incorrectly perceived as the leader of the project that led to this important innovation. Although Mead did not necessarily seek to unfairly take credit for himself, what Conway dubbed Conway Effect led him to receive more, or sometimes all, of the credit.

The Conway Effect is a slightly modified version of what is known as the Conway Effect. Mathilda Effect: Women’s scientific contributions are often attributed to the closest man working on the same topic. The Conway Effect states that people who are “other” in computing, including women and people of color of all genders, form a group that society does not expect to make major advances and therefore do not receive full credit when they do. because they do it. are literally forgotten.

Conway highlighted that after some initial joint recognition, Mead received unique awards for their joint work, as well as being commemorated along with other men at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. She and other women who did the same work, even when in leadership positions, were uninvited or similarly recognized.

Conway wrote about his experience in the essay where he introduced the “Conway Effect.”

Conway was added to the Computer History Museum in 201412 years after the mead. Even as the field of computing refers to its innovation as “Mead-Conway method,” with Mead’s name first, despite not being first alphabetically, shows this unfortunate effect.

Leaving and taking on a new role

Conway worked and lived quietly for much of her career, making important advances that reshaped the field of computing while trying not to present herself as a trans woman working in a conservative industry. Later in her life, she realized that the low profile she sought to maintain would be unsustainable if her career made it into the history books, which it eventually did. She also wanted to take credit for its previous innovations, pre-transition.

As a result, in 1999 she came out publicly as trans and became a vocal advocate for trans rights and other trans people in high tech. She maintained a detailed website that talked about her trans experience to try to help other trans people, especially trans women who are about to come out. feel less alone. She even participated in a version of “The Vagina Monologues””In 2004, starring trans women.

Despite the first setback in Conway’s career, which nearly cost her her livelihood and her family, she went on to have an illustrious career in computing. Her assessment of her place and the place of other women in the field continues to teach us an important lesson about gender and computing – just as the chip architecture she co-designed continues to shape what is possible for people to do with the computers. that shape our work and personal lives.

This article was republished from The conversationan independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.

It was written by: Mar Hicks, University of Virginia.

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Mar Hicks has received previous funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the University of Virginia, and Microsoft Corporation.