I work in the technology industry and I recently attended a round table discussion at the
University of British Columbia which was focused on getting more women into the Computer Science Faculty. In preparation for that meeting, I was looking at some of the numbers related to people in my organization. Approximately 20% of R&D team is female. Unfortunately, compared to many companies, this is quite a high percentage. The number that really aggravated me was the percentage of females in the company overall. Technology companies, after all, are not just made up of computer programmers, and while I had anticipated and steeled myself for a low percentage of women in R&D, I was less prepared for the dismal percentage in company: 30%.
We have to look for ways to overcome the inherent bias in our educational and organizational systems that discourages female participation, but we also need to encourage girls to get excited about technology. Who better to solve that problem than two young women who have created an initiative to help girls learn to code: