Emily Goligoski (@emgollie) is a marketing manager at Federated Media. She produces video interviews with female entrepreneurs for Women 2.0 and writes about culture news as TheSanFranista.

What happens when "equality in the workplace" is simply a numbers game? The ratio of women trained in computer science education is even lower now than it was in the 1980s. In 2008, girls made up just 17% of Advanced Placement test takers in computer science (the lowest percentage of any subject) and held less than 20% of CS degrees.

To combat these numbers, organizations have sprouted to improve and expand programming education for women. These include community workshops and regional networking groups aimed at school-age girls and working women. These organizations need to reach corporate sponsors in order secure money and space to hold their outreach.

Sometimes started out of frustration with the disproportionate ratio of male and female programmers, these five organizations are optimistic about building a community that includes first-time programmers and people shifting professional fields.

1. Grade School Girls: New York’s CodeEd







“It’s our sense that by the time you get to Stanford or Princeton, you’ve made it,” said Angie Schiavoni, a tech product consultant who co-founded CodeEd with her husband Sep Kamvar. “But that doesn’t address the gap in education for young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, and we think we can reach them in a fun way.” She and her husband, a Stanford computer science professor, personally paid for colorful notebooks with Linux operating systems for the middle-school age girls at Girls Prep, a charter school for low-income girls on the Lower East Side. Schiavoni and Kamvar teach a one-hour, Saturday class at Girls Prep.

After the first five weeks of HTML (which resulted in quite a few Justin Bieber fan sites) the girls can learn JavaScript, Python, and Java. The couple is currently seeking volunteer teachers to expand CodeEd to more schools in New York.

2. High School Students: Iridescent







Iridescent Learning is a Los Angeles-based mentorship organization that teaches mobile app development to teenagers in preparation for a business plan competition. The program started after product manager Anuranjita Tewary heard from several area teachers that computer science was missing from their high school curriculum.

She and programming expert Dr. Margaret Butler recruited 45 female high school students without programming experience for entrepreneurship and programming instruction by local business people. “We wanted them to learn how to write a business plan but also give them the experience of building something by having them learn how to program,” Tewary said.

Butler, who said that her computer science Ph.D program was only 10% women, worked with Tewary to find a language that would be immediately accessible. They turned to App Inventor for Android. “By the second day of class, students have written something that they download and run on their phone. Creating something that’s part of their normal realm of interaction speaks to their attachment to mobile — it isn’t video games that these girls are hooked on,” Butler said. “I think these types of programs create a generation of young women who will demand that fast feedback immediately, and that will revolutionize development.”

Iradescent now teaches about databases, location services, and object-oriented programming. Students work in teams to build apps that can create study flashcards or track what’s in your refrigerator. It’s important to demonstrate the social components of the work, Butler explained, by having girls work together towards a goal just as they would in a lab or startup. The program will have reached more than 400 girls by the end of the year.

Along with three “Technovation Express” workshops around the country this summer, goals for the program include having some students return as teaching assistants when they graduate from high school and trying to build an internship program in which area tech companies will pay program participants more than other summer employers might.

3. Working Women: Ruby on Rails Workshops for Women







Attendees of the quarterly, two-day Ruby on Rails workshops for women in San Francisco and New York are asked about their programming experience when registering and split into beginner, intermediate, back end, front end, and Windows developer groups. Instructors and teaching assistants volunteer their weekends. Participants range from interns to CTOs. The San Francisco workshops are free thanks to corporate sponsorships and Pivotal Labs donating its office space.

Organizer and developer Sarah Allen is planning to roll out some Ruby workshops in Spanish later this year, and she explained why these introductory meet-ups were crucial: “The tech industry used to promote diversity for moral reasons, and now diversity is seen as a strength that makes good business sense. Having a diverse set of people create your software makes it better for the very diverse people who will use it.”

She and New York host Sarah Mei recognized a need for programming education that was accessible to women. Allen said an increase in the number of study groups and women-filled events indicates they’ve succeeded and proves that they’re slowly “raising the ambient volume of technology among women.”

Not all of the 300 women they’ve reached will become programmers, but the two co-founders think they may have better conversations with developers they work with in the future. There’s already a corresponding internship program for women programmers.

Monikka Delazerda, a marketing intern at MyJoffer.com, took part in the Rails workshop after a male colleague invited her (there’s a rule that men can only participate if they’re accompanied by a woman). Delazerda began practicing programming fundamentals just one month before Rails with several small student groups. “It’s really nice to find a sense of community — instead of sitting alone with a big book, I get to learn with others and make fewer errors,” Delazerda said.







Geek Girl Camp’s success in hosting regional data design workshops points to the emergence of programming education that’s popping up separate from universities. Communities are creating these opportunities to increase the diversity of working programmers. The organization teaches courses about blogging and social media but says its day-long summer bootcamps draw the most interest.

The organization’s programming lead, web development firm president Sue Malomo, said her motivation for teaching is presenting options: “My goal was to expose women to what's “out there” for technology, whether it's the Mac platform or databases or programming. Once they know their options, it's easier for them to go out and find more information or decide what they want to learn.”

Malomo said that there was exciting overflow and enthusiasm during the most recent bootcamp. In seeking feedback at the end, one participant who had come for an organization session said she was inspired by the possibilities presented. "This is what we need! We need to be challenged. We need to know what else is out there for us to learn!"

5. For Educators & Professionals







The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference is an annual consortium that includes female students, large company recruiters, and educators. Run by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, the conference is the world’s largest gathering of technical women in computing. Last year’s conference, “Creating Technology for Social Good,” attracted approximately 1,600 women.

The celebration includes a day of programming for the Computer Science Teacher's Association, which supports problem solving and computing education for middle school and high school teachers. “In many schools, computer science teachers and their students have been getting the hand-me-downs from much better resourced programs for years,” said Dr. Chris Stephenson, executive director of the CSTA. Some teachers struggle to keep enough of their old, battered computers alive in order to teach their students.

In addition to resources, Stephenson identified other key elements that she says are required to address underrepresentation in computing such as access to challenging courses, well-trained teachers, and pedagogy: “We have to find more engaging ways to teach our students, ways that affirm who they are, and what they care about…”

Final Words

If children are the future, then young women will carry the torch for a new generation of diverse, educated, female programmers. As Brad Feld, chairman of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, said at New York’s We Own It Summit: “I’m obsessed with people between 10 and 25 — the energy going into these people is where the entrepreneurial growth in the future will be. We need to provide leadership for young people to change the arc of society over 20 years.”

Other resources for aspiring female programmers include DotDiva, GirlStart, and Dev Chix. Let us know about any other opportunities or organizations in the comments below.

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