Communications of the ACM
No Boys Allowed: Tackling the Coding Gender Gap
The nonprofit Girls Who Code aims to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering fields.
Credit: U.S. News & World Report
Girls Who Code, a nonprofit established in 2012, aims to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering fields by teaching girls computing skills and encouraging them to pursue opportunities in computer science.
Of all the full-time, year-round employed civilians 16 years and older, women comprise 27.5 percent of computer and information systems managers, according to the 2013 American Community Survey. The same data shows 25.1 percent of all computer and mathematical occupations are filled by women, and within that category, 20.3 percent of computer programmers are female.
Girls Who Code runs seven-week summer immersion programs for girls at companies and university settings across the country. The summer immersion program "[has] almost been kind of like an incubator for an incredibly diverse 21st century female workforce in tech and engineering," says program organizer Suzanne Kennedy.
During the last two weeks of the program, students designed a final project.
"A big part of the Girls Who Code program is giving us the power to do our own research and figure out our own problems so we could work on it independently," says IAC program attendee Andrea Gonzales. She says the projects coming out of Girls Who Code programs demonstrate that if more women code, they can help create products that diversify what the tech industry develops.
From U.S. News & World Report
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