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Query and Report Writing Opened Doors
for the First Generation of Women in Information Technology

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Bill Langston

Today, it’s not hard to find a female IT director or software developer. But as we celebrate Women’s History Month, let's recall that for many years women with a technical skillset and a desire to work in IT were often steered into technical support, training, and frequently, query and report writing. Whether you attribute this move to fewer women having four-year computer science degrees, training in programming languages, workplace bias, or skill, it was commonplace.

In thousands of shops, if you needed help understanding an application process or someone to write a database report, you needed to find the office “Query Queen.” In the IBM “midrange” community, the Introduction to IBM Query/400 session at the COMMON conference was taught for roughly 20 years by a woman who worked for a healthcare organization. Even the IBMers who presented query and business intelligence software were frequently women.

At NGS, women with these skills have played a major role in training and support since our inception. These “soft IT skills” were essential to business operations long before people began taking university courses in Structured Query Language (SQL) and analytics.

NGS enjoys great working relationships with many women who use our software to help their companies run more efficiently and gain insights. We enjoy working with many men, too, but this month, let’s honor the Query Queens, past and present, who turn data into information every day. Thank you.    

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