Hidden Figures

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Hidden Figures is a movie directed by Theodore Melfi which relates the story of Katherine Goble, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, a mathematician that worked as a human computer in a group where gender discrimination and racism is very present. Katherine and a group of women worked in the West Area Computers of the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia where they were assigned to different jobs as they were needed. 

After Yuri Gagarin was launched to space, United States were in a hurry to send their astronauts into space, so Katherine was assigned to work on the program and Mary was assigned to work on the capsule heat shield while Dorothy was still in charge of the rest of the women. After being battered by they job mates, Katherine demonstrated her knowledge to solve difficult equations needed for the launching and for picking up the astronaut, Mary was an essential part of the team that developed the heat shield and finally, Dorothy trained the group of women to program the new IBM machines. 

A very important part of this movie is the segregation that black people suffered, not only in jobs but also in daylife, a clear example of this is when Dorothy went into the library to search for a Fortran book and she was told to check on the "black people section" where they had no books related to what she was looking for. 

I found disgusting the way that "white people" treated the group of engineering women, they suffered a lot of discrimination to the point where they had to use "special restrooms" for them. But no matter how bad they were treated, they never were disrespectful and they always focused on working hard to help the country. Their efforts were recognized when Katherine was considered to say yes or no to the picking up coordinates for the launching and Dorothy was needed to teach the other programmers how to work with the IBM machines. 

I think that this movie is very interesting because it shows us a problem that started some years ago and even though nowadays you don't see a lot of discrimination cases, it is still present. It doesn't matter your gender, your race, sexual orientation, we are all needed for something, we are all valuable and discrimination must not exist.

References: 

- Melfi, T. (Director). (2016). Hidden Figures[Motion picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox.

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