With nearly 16 million programmers in the world, at 10 to 15 percent women, there are more than two million female programmers — but we never see them. Technical women remain largely invisible and behind the scenes despite important and often elite contributions.

In tech, we are standing on the shoulders of giants — men and women who have innovated and collaborated to bring us to where we are today. So many entrepreneurs, computer scientists, heroes, and creators have come before us — and yet we are critically challenged by the lack of visibility innovators of those days.

In the Hollywood film Jobs, all of the men on the core Macintosh team are introduced and have speaking roles, but we don’t meet Joanna Hoffman or Susan Kare, though both were a core part of the original Macintosh product development team.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (GDI), through studies done with the USC Annenberg School, found a three to one ratio of male to female characters in children’s TV, with 80 percent of the jobs held by characters in kids TV and films being held by male characters. We need to help Hollywood and other media creation hubs fix this damaging bug. Armed with GDI research and the need to shift, we and many others have begun helping with outreach work to top media partners.

We have a tremendous opportunity to help change the narrative and our actions — all of us, women and men working alongside one another, have an important role to play here.

With nearly 16 million programmers in the world, at 10 to 15 percent women, there are more than two million female programmers — but we never see them. Technical women remain largely invisible and behind the scenes despite important and often elite contributions.