Women make up only 29% of the workforce in science and engineering careers, but about half of the entire general workforce (ngcproject.org).  In the past, these industries weren’t just male dominated– they were entirely male-possesed. As a new progressive era picks up, women are spearheading their own involvement in these industries that they have been historically discluded from– one of these women is Allison Doe, sponsor of the Girls Who Code program.

The organization was started six years ago with a simple mission- fuel young girls’ interest in STEM fields, particularly computer science, due to the previously mentioned gender gap in them.

“Girls who Code is important because there is a discrepancy between males and females in the IT workspace, and as a teacher of the computer science class here you can clearly see it’s a male-dominated interest and class,” Doe said.  “So I thought it was a program to help support girls and make them feel comfortable trying it and encourage them to keep learning in those types of interests.”

The girls in the organization know that they’re part of something important– and they are excited to be on the frontlines of the path to equality in the STEM workspace.  

“There’s definitely a huge difference between boys and girls in the class. There are like 8 girls in my class of 32 people, so there’s definitely a small amount of us but I don’t feel like any of us are treated differently,” AP Computer Science student Sydney Goujon said. “I definitely like the idea of changing the gender gap in the industry. There are a lot of job opportunities for coding since there are small amounts of females in it, so there are definitely more companies that want more females to join.”

As the information we receive via technology continues to increasingly dominate the development of modern society, it is important that women are playing an equal role in delivering that information.  The quality of the information we receive will be so much higher and more representative of women when half of the population has their voice heard. Girls’ interests should be fostered in areas that aren’t traditionally female-influenced so the information is catered towards other women, which is exactly the mission and accomplishment of Girls Who Code.