A group of Australian female tech leaders are banding together to encourage more women into careers in the IT and computer technology industry.

In a field that has traditionally been male-dominated, the Code Like a Girl team is aiming to get more females in leadership roles and more schoolgirls into computer classes.

Low numbers of female employees in the industry led developer Ally Watson to found Code Like a Girl - a networking event for women in digital industries.

"The code women minority need that extra support, with being a minority comes a lot of things, like less confidence and imposter syndrome," Ms Watson said.

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"Because they are a minority they feel that maybe they don't belong there, that it's a man's world.

"Initiatives like Code Like a Girl is just trying to encourage and support these girls."

While Code Like a Girl is only in Melbourne, Ms Watson would like to see it expand nationwide. She said it was about showing women the possibilities and careers available in the tech world.

"From my experience every sort of technical director I've had has been male.

"So what's good about the initiative is we want to highlight local talent and get these, showcase these women who are doing great things in leadership roles, so that women do have female mentors to look up to.

"It can be quite difficult to imagine yourself in a technical directors shoes when all you've had is male technical leaders."

Founder and managing director of Deepend, a Melbourne-based digital communications agency, Kath Blackham said she knows how lonely it can be for a woman in the tech industry.

"I've just been at an industry conference over in the USA and there was 150 there and there was about seven females, six or seven females."

Ms Blackham said women can be fantastic assets to a tech company.

"I've been in the industry for over 15 years, and I've definitely seen girls approach problem solving differently, they approach coding differently, but that's not to say that it's better or worse, it's just a different way of approaching it.

"So they might put a bit more thought into it, there maybe isn't that over confidence sometimes.

"You just have to make sure that you're accommodating somebody that runs an agency, you have to be very accommodating to ensure that it's a very safe environment for females and males to you know, create, to do their very best."

Co-ordinator of the Melbourne chapter of the International Game Developers Association, Giselle Rosman, said there are simply not enough women in tech industries.

"It comes down to the numbers and the fact that we are so underrepresented in games as women, and in making games, which are a cultural heritage in a sense these days," she said.

"And I want to be hearing stories from everyone. At the moment in Australia we're probably at about 10 per cent women in the games industry."

Breaking down gender stereotypes among children

Ms Watson said it was important to encourage girls from a very young age.

"There's an unconscious bias that people tend to buy their little girls barbies and baby dolls, and whereas boys will usually get electronic games and things that will get their minds ticking, take them apart, put them together.

"So naturally they sort of fall in to this type of career. Where girls turn away from that."

Game developer Giselle Rosman wanted to see more focus on computer science in the school curriculum.

"For us to deal with the numbers discretion and to address that we need to be looking at it from even almost a primary school view, where women are, and girls, are encouraged to get involved with tech and games and feel comfortable with that," she said.

"I know there's something recently in the UK where they've kind of redefined programing and put it in a languages stream, rather than a maths and sciences.

"Which already is breaking down a barrier, so redefining it into something that women don't feel alienated by could be a really positive move."

The fist Code Like a Girl event attracted 100 female attendees.

Ms Rosman said the idea was already having positive impacts.

"Just for them to be able to sort of meet and mingle and realise that they can have support, they can support each other, can make a big difference to that kind of thing as well, and realise ... you're not the odd one out."