Girls who code

Freia did her internship at Girls who Code, a non-profit who aims to provide computer science education and exposure to 1 million young women by 2020.

She has a great time and enjoyed her 8 week internship. As she puts it, "Although her role was to help teach, she learnt much more than she taught".

During this period I came across several programs on television which covered the programs as well as personalities such as Hilary Clinton giving the program a mention.

I was curious to know why such a specific gender based program should get so much attention. When Freia returned I asked her, especially since I've always felt that the world in general and the US specifically has managed to have a level playing field across diverse sections of society, whether its gender, ethnicity, beliefs or preferences.

When Freia returned after completing the internship, I asked her about this. she mentioned several things including the vast gender gap in engineering generally and computer science specifically. I wasn't sure that this was accurate. Until I checked and found that strangely enough women today represent just 12% of all computer science graduates. Ironically, in 1984, they represented 37%.

Studies have shown that 74% of girls express interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), but only 0.3% choose Computer Science as a college major. Girls Who Code aims to correct this imbalance.

What's encouraging is that several of the large IT companies, Square, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber and even other corporates like Goldman Sachs, At&T amongst several others are hosting, sponsoring and most of all encouraging not only Girls who Code, but also Girls to Code, for them. And that is the beginning of bringing back equal opportunities.