3 min
Women in tech have historically had a difficult relationship.
Recent years have seen significant progress. Yet still today there is a gap to close. Today in the USA and EU there is still a notable 16% wage gap between men and women’s salaries in the technical sphere. This means that for every dollar earned by a man, a woman earns just 84 cents.
We tend to forget that it’s thanks to women if we’ve achieved some huge technical milestones. We’ve been able to land on the moon (thanks Margaret Hamilton, Software Engineer), discovered radioactivity (shoutout to Marie Curie). Nowadays we’re also able to instruct a machine to perform tasks for us, aka programming (thanks Ada Lovelace).
In celebration of all the great women working in technology, we’d like to highlight some of the top communities supporting women in tech.
6 organizations and initiatives aimed at empowering women in tech
NCWIT
The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), is the farthest-reaching network of leaders and educators focused on advancing innovation and computer science. The community aims are to support education programs at every level. Participation in the network is mainly for organizations that want to adopt a more gender-equal approach in their activities. Individuals can join the network as volunteers.
Girls Who Code
The community aims to lower the gap of women working in tech. They act via school and college programs, home learning, everything offered for free to any girl and woman willing to learn. As an individual, firstly you could leverage the material they share on their website. Secondly, you could be tutored during one of their club moments displaced all around the US and UK. Another option is to join a 2-week summer course (virtual, at the time of writing). Learn more about Girls Who Code.
League of Women Coders
League of Women Coders (LWC) is a US-based (NYC and DC) collective, organizing recurring meetings where women can gather together to hack on projects, give casual 5-minute lightning talks, ask all of their technical questions, and toss around ideas together. It’s a great group to improve coding skills while enjoying the company of people who are on the same page.
Girls Develop It
Girls Develop It (GDI) is a no-profit organization that creates welcoming, supportive opportunities for women and non-binary adults to learn software development skills. Firstly, it’s not always easy to start from scratch on a brand new topic. Secondly, computer science and software development are not among the easiest but a community like this one eases the onboarding process a lot. Lastly, these programs are not for free but they provide a full-time tutor and a complete learning path to master the coding skills you need to enter the job market.
Women Who Code
While talking about women in tech, we couldn’t pass by Women Who Code (WWCode). This is a network of IT Professionals and Developers, supporting all women in tech and development via scholarship, education at large, a job board of hiring companies. Their main goal is to redefine the industry so that women are equally represented as leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers.
Women In Tech
WIT is surely among the biggest no-profit organizations working to bridge the gap in technology roles. According to Eurostat, women represent only 17% of the people working in STEM roles (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) across Europe. WIT works actively to invert the trend.
To achieve this goal, they put effort into 4 main areas. These include; education, business, social inclusion, and advocacy. They promote activities for each of them. You can start joining their activities for free with a mentoring program. Other options are to visit their job board to find a new job or place a job offer if you are an employer.
We have high hopes that we’ll see more women thriving in the tech industry.
Education and support organizations promoting women in tech is growing too. To close the gap, all of us must be committed to educating about gender equality which will help continue the progress. We also need to be committed on advancing the careers of women in technology too.
To continue the progress, we need to see more women in tech because it’ll inspire future generations of women. Read about 20 organizations advancing women in tech.
In other words, we need to see more women employed in the industry. We also need to see them promoting online coding courses and in top level executive positions at tech companies.
Further reading:
Share via Social Networks