Google’s diversity report last month revealed just how white and male the company — and the tech industry as a whole — really is. But in a first step to correct the disparity, the company has launched a new initiative to help get school-age girls interested in coding. Made with Code.
By the numbers, women make up half of the economy’s workforce but are seldom represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Women only make up about 25 percent of STEM jobs and have even lower representation in tech alone.
Google reported they employ only three women for every seven men, and just 17 percent of their tech workers are women. Yahoo introduced its own diversity program. Both companies also reported low rates of women in leadership positions. Yahoo only had 15 percent women in tech supervisory roles, compared to 21 percent at Google, which has no female executives and only one woman on its senior leadership team.
But the lack of women in the tech workforce goes beyond 24/7 jobs and pizza rinds. Less than 20 percent of high school girls take the advanced placement (AP) computer science test, or go on to earn a college degree in the subject. While AP computer science courses aren’t available at most schools, two states didn’t have a single female student take the test in 2013.
Girls also tend to be steered away from STEM, and many develop negative views of the field early on. While 80 percent of high school students are clueless as to what computer science majors learn, female students unfamiliar with the subject often associated it with words such as “boring” and “hard.”
Made With Code aims to close the gap by showing girls that there’s more to coding than it seems. Girls will be able to design 3-D printed bracelets or create songs using Blockly coding technology, which lets users build programs with blocks of code rather than typing it in manually. The program spotlights women who are dancers, music producers, cinematographers and humanitarians and shows how they all use coding to do their jobs. Google is also sponsoring and partnering with similar initiatives nationwide such as Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code and Technovation.
