Convincing more women to break into tech, beat the
brogrammer
culture, empowering women to narrow the gender gap in Tech.
A Brief History of the Programming Field
Today, the computer programming field is dominated by men. But that
wasn’t always the case. In fact, for a long time (as early as the
1960s), computer programming was a women’s field, hence it used to be
known as the
pink ghetto
—so it was underpaid and undervalued. Over time, stereotypes about the
field shifted to the point that computer programming came to be seen as
a job better suited for men than women. Instead of a job that was
perfect for detail-oriented women who loved to collaborate and plan, it
became a job for antisocial, “geeky” boys. And here we are today,
computer coding has largely became a male-dominated sector. Even now in
this tech centric world, the five largest tech companies on the planet
(Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft) only have a workforce of
about 34.4% women.
Here’s why “learn to code” should make
it on every woman’s to-do list
Empowerment
Coding is empowering. It allows women to work behind the techological
movement and create what will suit our needs. More women in coding means
that technology can accurately reflect what women want out of it.
Employment opportunities
Learning to code is a new kind of literacy. Web development skills are
transferable and applicable to every industry–from agriculture to
entertainment to banking and everything in between. Once you learn, or
at least understand, the fundamentals, you make yourself much more
marketable in the employer hiring pool. It also gives you more
flexibility to choose your own path as you will have a variety of
options open to you in terms of your career.
To understand and impress the developers you work with
No-one wants to feel left behind when your colleagues are talking about
html5 or java. Even a small amount of knowledge will go a long way into
understanding what makes the developers you work with tick.
Women have the edge
Women are statistically the biggest consumers of technology. Catering
for this audience requires insight into their needs and preferences. In
a world where new ideas are welcomed and often thrive, there is no
better position to be than as a women in the tech industry. The
technology industry with its ideas and products have been male dominated
and male orientated in the past few decades but this has started to
shift. It is widely recognised that women are a largely untapped target
market in the technology industry as they consume more technology
products than men and still hold most of the household purchasing power.
Creating only male orientated products is a huge oversight by the
technology industry and this new wave of opportunity in creating
products for women is just more likely to be capitalised upon by a woman
or at least in a team with diversity.
You will challenge the Tech industry
By now, it’s not news that the world of tech and startups is
male-dominated. Globally, men outnumber women 7 to 3 in the tech
industry. There have been countless articles, and rightfully so, on the
“programming” culture of Silicon Valley and the tech industry overall.
Scenarios of sexism are not uncommon, and more often than not swept
under the carpet in the workplace. Working in tech is not for the faint
of heart. Women need not be discouraged by this, but rather join forces
and provide support, educate, and advocate for bringing change to the
industry standard.
Women need to understand that a job in tech or the startup world
can be a reality. The more people advocate, and the more women take it
upon themselves to learn
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)
topics, the smaller the gender gap will become.
