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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: post |
| 3 | +title: "US-RSE Pride Month Spotlight - Edith Windsor" |
| 4 | +tags: [dei, pride-month] |
| 5 | +--- |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +US-RSE's [DEI working group (DEI-WG)](https://us-rse.org/wg/dei/) is proud to |
| 8 | +help US-RSE celebrate and participate in Pride Month. Throughout June, the |
| 9 | +US-RSE will spotlight LGBTQ+ individuals who have been involved in computing, |
| 10 | +science, engineering, and/or math, and have inspired our members through their |
| 11 | +accomplishments in their careers and their personal stories. |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +## This week's Pride Month spotlight features Edith Windsor |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +{% include image.html |
| 16 | +url="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Edie_Windsor_DC_Pride_2017.jpg" |
| 17 | +description="Edie Windsor at DC Pride, 2017, Photo by Rex Block, CC0 |
| 18 | +<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons" |
| 19 | +style="float:right; padding:1em; max-width:350px;" %} |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Did you know that the lead plaintiff in the US Supreme Court case that |
| 22 | +overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2013, leading to |
| 23 | +marriage being expanded to include same-sex couples, was a systems programmer |
| 24 | +at IBM and then a software development consultant in her own company? |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +Edith (Edie) Schlain was born in 1929 in Philadelphia. She graduated from |
| 27 | +Temple in 1950, where she met her future husband, Saul Windsor, who she married |
| 28 | +in 1951 and divorced in 1952. She later earned a master's in math from NYU in 1957. |
| 29 | +She then joined IBM, where she worked for 16 years in senior technical |
| 30 | +and management positions related to systems architecture and implementation of |
| 31 | +operating systems and language processors. As AnitaB.org |
| 32 | +[describes](https://anitab.org/profile/remembering-edith-windsor-tech-pioneer-equality-advocate/), |
| 33 | +she started as a mainframe programmer and later rose to "the company's highest |
| 34 | +technical rank, Senior Systems Programmer, on the strength of her top-notch |
| 35 | +debugging skills. 'They couldn't fix the code because they couldn't read it,' |
| 36 | +Edith told a journalist. 'But I could read code until it wrapped around the |
| 37 | +room and back again. A guy I was working with said, 'give this woman a roll of |
| 38 | +toilet paper, she can do anything.'" During this time, in 1963, she met and |
| 39 | +began dating Thea Spyer, who asked Edith to marry her in 1967, and they began |
| 40 | +living together six months later. |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +In her professional life, as AnitaB.org [continues to |
| 43 | +describe](https://anitab.org/profile/remembering-edith-windsor-tech-pioneer-equality-advocate/), |
| 44 | +"Edith left IBM in 1975, becoming the founding president of PC Classics, a |
| 45 | +consulting firm specializing in major software development projects. During |
| 46 | +this time, Edith also helped countless LGBTQ groups become tech literate. 'I |
| 47 | +computerized everybody,' she quipped. 'I got calls from gay organizations that |
| 48 | +wanted to computerize their mail systems. All of my IBM experience continues |
| 49 | +throughout my life.' Her love of computing was personal, too — she was the |
| 50 | +owner of the very first IBM-PC delivered in New York City." In 1993, when New |
| 51 | +York City first began registering domestic partnerships between same-sex |
| 52 | +couples, they registered. Because the US did not allow same-sex marriage, they |
| 53 | +traveled to Toronto in 2007 where they were married. Two years later, Thea |
| 54 | +died, and left her estate to Edie, but because the US did not recognize their |
| 55 | +marriage, Edie had to pay taxes on the estate. This was the cause of her |
| 56 | +lawsuit that led to Section 3 of DOMA being ruled unconstitutional, enabling |
| 57 | +same sex marriage to become legal, after which the US government refunded the |
| 58 | +estate tax. |
| 59 | + |
| 60 | +Again |
| 61 | +[quoting](https://anitab.org/profile/remembering-edith-windsor-tech-pioneer-equality-advocate/) |
| 62 | +AnitaB.org, "Edith was recognized by the National Computing Conference as an |
| 63 | +operating systems pioneer. In 2013, she was the Grand Marshal of the New York |
| 64 | +City LGBT Pride March and a runner-up for Time's Person of the Year." She died |
| 65 | +in 2017, and was eulogized by Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama said about her, |
| 66 | +"America's long journey towards equality has been guided by countless small |
| 67 | +acts of persistence, and fueled by the stubborn willingness of quiet heroes to |
| 68 | +speak out for what's right. Few were as small in stature as Edith Windsor — and |
| 69 | +few made as big a difference to America." |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +[Read more about US-RSE's planned Pride Month |
| 72 | +activities]({% post_url 2025-06-13-pride-month %}). |
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