Closing Canada’s tech gender gap, one line of code at a time

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2013-12-09 16:25

Article here. Excerpt:

'Earlier this fall, the seventh annual Global Gender Gap Report — an index of states that have best addressed gender inequality — ranked Canada 20, behind countries such as South Africa, Nicaragua and Cuba. Wage inequality and political empowerment for women were particular sore points, with Canada ranking 35 and 41, respectively.

To those areas of concern should be added another: entrepreneurship. The “entrepreneurship gap” between women and men in Canada is nothing short of “striking,” according to a report from TD Bank showing Canadian women are only about half as likely as men to start their own business. This is despite the fact they make up half of the workforce and more than half of post-secondary students.
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Or you can blame it on the obstacles to building a culture of entrepreneurialism among women: A recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, found more than half of women doubt their abilities to start a business (despite that “women are rated higher in 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership,” according to a 2012 Harvard Business Review study.)

Or there’s the “old boys’ club” argument: In the startup world, it’s impossible to connect with the right mentors, advisors and investors without a strong network. If women are unable to tap into that male-dominated ecosystem, then they’re at a marked disadvantage.

But closer to home, I see a slightly different issue in play. I’d like to think HootSuite, for instance, is anything but a stodgy old boys’ club. As a social media company, the heart of our business is building relationships. Our employees are by and large young, progressive and open-minded.
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HootSuite also hosts monthly meetups of Ladies Learning Code, a Toronto-based initiative that has introduced more than 4,000 women and girls to programming and technical skills since 2011. Approximately one Saturday a month in our office, a dozen mentors and about 40 attendees spend eight hours working together. Importantly, it’s not just code: Mentors introduce themselves, share their personal stories and offer insight on how women can thrive in a male-dominated industry.

Creating supportive environments to learn computer science skills is a start. But truly narrowing the gender gap in the startup community comes down in large part to how we teach children. Providing better computer science education in public schools and encouraging girls to participate, is perhaps the only way to rewrite the stereotypes and break open the old boys’ club.

To that end, Ladies Learning Code recently introduced Girls Learning Code, camps and workshops aimed at 8- to 13- and 13- to 17-year-old girls. With a focus on teamwork, creativity and technology, the program hopes to help girls see tech as a medium for self-expression and a means of changing the world, noted Emma Nemtin, marketing director for tech company Hubba and one of the organization’s mentors, in a recent post for my company’s blog.'

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Comments

... or regular meet-ups of this or that kind. What is wrong is the obsession with gender distribution, especially if the industry is "lacking" in women.

It's a lot fairer to say I.T. as an industry is understaffed. How many other lines of work can see even someone new to it making $30k/yr. (even in Doorknob), then by year 5, $70-80,000/yr. Plenty of lawyers with 20 years in would like to be making that much these days.

I've said it before and will say it again: Aside from having the aptitude (which more people have than most may realize), the real problem is the appeal of the work. It isn't that hard from a logical standpoint to write code-- once you have it down some, and admittedly, you have to pay your learning dues the first couple years at it. But it's not much harder to write "good code", too. What is hard is to keep people enthused about dealing with the kinds of things programmers struggle most with day-to-day: ridiculous environment configuration issues, incessantly shifting requirements, internal conflicts over various types of standards, conflicting programmatic library module issues, production support issues that never seem to go away, recurring distractions from work due to meetings and requests for commentary/helping other programmers, etc., etc. So the actual programming itself isn't that hard; it's the constant din of the entailed demands on a programmer's time that get him/her ready to head for the hills by the time they are 40 and try their hand at something like alpaca farming. [Seriously, knew a guy once who did that. After 20 years pounding out code and all that other stuff I just described, he chucked it and started an alpaca farm. Since then, he's been "as happy as an alpaca in wool". Or something like that.]

Anyway, for new programmers or would-be programmers, there is also this: one must, like a fledgling plumber or auto mechanic, be committed to learning despite the set-backs. Before twisting (er, training) one's mind to think like a programmer, one has to go through the near-alchemical process of becoming one. This means struggling with many kinds of logic problems in programmatic constructs that allow code to do useful things, learning the myriad of related technologies required to be an employable programmer (e.g.: popular database system language syntax variants, HTML, Javascript, etc.), and just plain paying the dues of long hours spent trying to "just plain figure this $hit out". Once the groundwork gets laid, yes, it becomes easier. But then it's a new set of "challenges": the constant need for keeping up with trends and updates to the language(s) one uses, the sort of day-to-day hassles described above, etc.

One can decide to go into programming. One can even stay in it for some time. One can in fact stay in it their entire career; the money's addictive. But not many "one"s actually do. Many don't. This doesn't mean they leave I.T.; they may become project managers, administrative managers, business analysts, etc. But stay in actual programming? Many do not, not even for 5 years. So this is a factor, regardless of gender, that is always at play.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2013-12-10 03:56