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Women of the Web

Last week, Sean Coates posted a question asking for names of women that helped to craft the web in its earliest days. What followed was a truly inspiring thread highlighting the accomplishments of women in creating the open web. But it was also frustrating. Frustrating because much of this work has been erased from history, or worse, been stolen and copied.

I want to be clear on this. Women have helped build the web, and have often transformed it. The tendency in our industry to overlook and forget about these contributions has to be reversed, or we will lose a piece of the web itself.

So what follows is a list, pulled from the sources I’ve been digging through for over a year. It is a list of posts and talks and articles that include a clever trick, or have come to define a technique or a moment of the web, some that even represent a complete paradigm shift for the industry. They were also all written by women, many from that Twitter thread.

It is far from a comprehensive list (in fact, it barely scratches the surface); it mostly stops after 2010 or so, which is where my research has taken me so far. If you have something you’d like to add, feel free to email me, or let me know on Twitter and I’d be happy to add it. These are just a few interesting articles written by some truly brilliant women. I’ve read them all. I suggest you do the same.

Also, Tara Hunt put together a really helpful Twitter list, #LadyOGs, for those interested.

Posted by:

Jay