It's a well-known fact that the tech industry is mainly composed of male professionals, but Reshma Saujani, the former deputy public advocate of New York City, wants to change this. As part of this effort, this month Saujani launched a new initiative called Girls Who Code, aiming to bring more female professionals into the tech industry. The program is backed by tech giants such as Twitter, Google, eBay, and General Electric, and is designed to encourage high school girls to study computer science and engineering.
"Together with leading educators, engineers, and entrepreneurs, Girls Who Code has developed a new model for computer science education, pairing intensive instruction in robotics, web design, and mobile development with high-touch mentorship led by the industry's top female developers and entrepreneurs," reads the Girls Who Code Web site.
Only 3.6 percent of Fortune 500 companies are women-led, and less than 10 percent of venture capital-backed firms have female founders, said Saujani. Women, however, use the Internet 17 percent more than men.
As technology is one of the fastest growing job sectors, women have great opportunities to get involved and build a lucrative career. "By 2018, there will be 1.4 million computer science-related job openings, yet U.S. universities are expected to produce enough computer science graduates to fill just 29 percent of these jobs," explains the Girls Who Code Web site.
The first session of the program kicks off this summer. It consists of an eight-week summer course in New York, enabling 20 high school girls to work with a tech mentor, while also taking comprehensive classes on coding, design, and entrepreneurship. The mentorship will continue even after the female high school students have completed the summer courses.
There is ample opportunity in the fast-growing tech industry, but girls have to be encouraged to pursue this path. "If we want there to be more women who pursue careers in engineering and computer science and feel welcome in these fields, we have to work on ways to increase the number of women studying engineering - it's that simple," Twitter engineer Sara Haider wrote in a blog post detailing the company's collaboration with Girls Who Code. "Of course we have self-interest in this too: having more female engineers on staff leads to having an even better working environment at Twitter."
