I’m sitting here at work kinda slammed and sick, but hey, it’s ALD, and that’s kinda cool.

At work, we were talking about Ada Lovelace – interesting because we are in fashion, and her first application was making jacquard. I love that fact.

In thinking about Ada with this coworker, I realized that she is an important lesson in what one can do with childcare, money, and education. She heard about someone making a machine, thought about how she’d apply the technology, and wrote him a long letter with instructions… before it was even built. She had the leisure and time and energy to pursue science and math.

So next time you’re judging an industry on its lack of women, don’t say “because they don’t have interest/ability/”they don’t have minds like that”” think instead of how the world would look, and be, very different if everyone had equal access to good math and science education, childcare if they chose to have children, and time to study and pursue free projects, if they could afford it.