The driving force behind the creation of COBOL, Hawes identified the need for a common business language in accounting and proposed the concept in March 1959 while working as a senior product planning analyst for the ElectroData Division of Burroughs Corporation. She approached Grace Hopper with the proposal, who suggested seeking funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. That effort succeeded, and in May 1959 approximately 40 representatives of computer users and manufacturers met to form the Short Range Committee of the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). The resulting language, COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), was designed to resemble ordinary English, to be portable across different brands of computers, and to handle business calculations such as payroll.
Within the Short Range Committee, Hawes chaired the data descriptions subcommittee, the team initially tasked with identifying problems in existing business compilers.
Hawes also contributed to the literature of database management, co-authoring three works: "A Survey of Generalized Database Management Systems" (1969), "Feature Analysis of Generalized Database Management Systems: CODASYL Systems Committee" (1971), and "Optimized Code Generation from Extended-Entry Decision Tables" (1971).
