Mission Statement
Girls Who Code programs work to inspire, educate, and equip girls with the computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities.
Our vision is to reach gender parity in computing fields. We believe this is paramount to ensure the economic prosperity of women, families, and communities across the globe, and to equip citizens with the 21st century tools for innovation and social change. We believe that more girls exposed to computer science at a young age will lead to more women working in the technology and engineering fields.The U.S. Department of Labor projects that by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computer specialist job openings. To reach gender parity by 2020, women must fill half of these positions, or 700,000 computing jobs. Anecdotal data tells us that an average of 30% of those students with exposure to computer science will continue in the field. This means that 4.6M adolescent girls will require some form of exposure to computer science education to realize gender parity in 2020. Girls Who Code has set out to reach 25% of those young women needed to realize gender parity.
Description
In 1984, 37% of all computer science graduates were women, but today that number is just 18%. 20% of AP Computer Science test-takers are female, and 0.4% of high school girls express interest in majoring in Computer Science. What’s going on?
Girls Who Code believes to close the gender gap in technology, we have to inspire girls to pursue computer science by exposing them to real life and on screen role models. We engage engineers, developers, executives, and entrepreneurs to teach and motivate the next generation. Our guest speakers, mentors, and instructors are leaders in their fields, working in positions our girls aspire to attain.
Our unique pairing of high quality instruction in programming fundamentals, web development and design, mobile development, and robotics with exposure to real-world technology companies is unmatched by any other program.
Girls Who Code programs are providing unparalleled computer science education to girls nationwide -- giving them the hard and soft skills needed to become the technologists of tomorrow. We don’t just offer exposure to technology, we train tomorrow’s engineers.
