Last night, in celebration of their first year of coding classes, Girl Develop It Fargo hosted a showing of CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap at the Fargo Theatre. The documentary came out earlier this year, and takes an in depth look at why there is a lack of women in the tech industry.
Photo by Dan Francis
“A White House study stated that by 2020 there would be 1 million unfilled computer science jobs in the USA,” writes CODE Director, Robin Hauser Reynolds. “With tech jobs plentiful and lucrative, why is the supply / demand ratio so skewed? Well, the tech industry is missing half the population.”
She goes on to say that in the process of interviewing countless men and women in tech, they found the reasons for the gender gap were multi-faceted.
“We learned that the underlying currents which dissuaded women and people of color from pursuing coding jobs…were systemic, pervasive, and complex,” she writes. “Mindsets, stereotypes, clogs in the educational pipeline, startup culture, lack of role models and sexism all play important roles in this mounting gender, ethnicity and economic issue.”
Reynolds interviewing. Photo by CODE
Debugging the gap in Fargo
Here in Fargo, groups like Girl Develop It are working to bridge this gender gap in tech. Their classes focus on giving women and girls a more comfortable atmosphere to learn coding.
Alex Fogarty, a graphic communications professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, said she has started to see an increase of women in her classes. One of her students, a woman named Sam Szczesny, left the theater last night saying, “I’m probably going to go home and code.”
A photo of a Girl Develop It Class (Photo by Greg Tehven)
However, Fogarty said, when she looks at the computer science classes, it is still mostly men.
“The film was uplifting and inspiring,” Fogarty said after the film. “Things are improving, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Blaine Booher, owner of local software company Clifton Labs, said while he would like to have more women in their company, the team is currently all male.
“We just don’t see women apply for full-time positions,” he said.
Like the CODE documentary, Fargo-based intellectual property lawyer Miguel Danielson traces this problem back to education. The idea is that if women feel they don’t “fit in” to the tech world, they are not going to learn to code or apply for techie jobs.
Danielson sees Fargo as the perfect starting ground for change.
As a close-knit community, he said, we can insist that local universities emphasize computer science programs for all students. We can insist that local tech companies create a culture that’s welcoming for both men and women. We can start debugging the gender gap here in Fargo, today.
“In Silicon Valley, it’s harder to make an impact,” he said. “But we can do it here.”
Shannon Wiedman and Megan Beck, GDI Fargo organizers! //Photo by Dan Francis
More Resources
In partnership with CODE, a new open source platform to help bridge the gender gap called She’s Coding was launched. She’s Coding provides education, resources, and actionable guidelines for anyone who wants to help bridge the gender gap in the field of computer science. Check them out here.
Check out the trailer for CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, here.
Girl Develop It classes will continue in to 2016. They plan to continue offering HTML/CSS courses as well as higher level coding courses in Python and Javascript. Stay tuned with their classes here.
Photos courtesy of Dan Francis Photography.
