Communications of the ACM
Can Congress Help Solve the Gender Gap in Tech?
"If you're not actually looking at the composition of these classrooms, you cannot improve them," says Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code.
Credit: Girls Who Code
Jacky Rosen, a former computer programmer and the current junior U.S. Senator from Nevada, attended an event hosted by Girls Who Code on Capitol Hill on Wednesday (July 10) to discuss policy solutions that could help close the gender gap in technology.
Girls Who Code founder and CEO Reshma Saujani announced at the event that the organization has been working with Rosen's team to draft what she called the "first-ever federal Girls Who Code legislation to encourage states to start reporting on their gender diversity data." The non-profit has successfully promoted and helped pass laws that track gender diversity in computing in states, but this was the first mention that it would be headed for the federal level.
The legislation is an important component in closing the gender gap, Saujani said, because current efforts to expand computer science education are having either no impact or a negative impact on girls' participation in computer science. The non-profit examines the trend in a new report, "The State of Girls in K-12 Computer Science Classrooms."
From EdSurge
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