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>In the history of cryptology, women tend to be either systematically excluded or reduced to objects. This is probably true, but cryptography/theoretical compu
by _d4bj 9y ago
>In the history of cryptology, women tend to be either systematically excluded or reduced to objects.
This is probably true, but cryptography/theoretical computer science might be one area where women have better representation than in other subfields of hard sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafi_Goldwasser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafi_Goldwasser, who invented a huge portion of modern crypto (zero-knowledge, set lower bound, doubly-efficient proofs, etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irit_Dinur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irit_Dinur, who basically invented property testing as well as a novel proof of the PCP theorem that wasn't hundreds of pages long
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~danama/ http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~danama/, also known for her work on the PCP theorem (wife of Scott Aaronson)
http://elaineshi.com/ http://elaineshi.com/, several papers on making ORAM and secure multiparty computation practical
Probably notable that the first three listed are all from/at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.
- Ar-Curunir 9y agoI don't think that quote is very true in the context of crypto; in my experience the theoretical crypto community is very open and friendly to all. Security is another matter; there's lots of politics there, but the crypto community is generally free of that kind of stuff.
- tptacek 9y agoAnecdotally, crypto conferences have noticeably more women than other areas of computer science. From the data, women are better represented in virtually all fields of science, from molecular biology to astronomy to pure mathematics, than they are in computer science. Computer science and physics are the two worst STEM fields for gender parity. My guess (that's all it is) is that cryptography is an intersection between CS and mathematics, and the mathematics draws more women into the field.
- JoachimSchipper 9y agoMy personal impression is that you're right: there's quite a lot of women cryptographers (thinking of "attendees of crypto conferences", but of "top figures in the field"), but these women are disproportionally from a mathematics background.