career

This is why girls can never be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Coding. It’s techy. It’s difficult. It’s an obscure concept. And you don’t need a penis to do it.

The non-profit trailblazer Girls Who Code is slowly de-bunking the male-computer-wizard stereotype that dominates the tech world.

They are doing this for a reason – the industry needs to catch up.

A 2016 report by the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) uncovered the following stats:

In 2015, women held 57% of all professional occupations, yet they held only 25% of all computing occupations.

Latinas and Black women hold only 1% and 3% of these jobs, respectively.

Even fewer women are found in software development and technology leadership.

88% of all information technology patents (from 1980–2010) are invented by male-only invention teams while only 2% are invented by female-only invention teams.

The latest project from Girls Who Code is a video series that makes clear the absolute ridiculousness of sexual discrimination in the industry.

The first video in the series, Why Can’t Girls Code, is a wonderfully sarcastic and brilliantly scathing list of all the reasons being a female might inhibit a person from coding effectively (think long eyelashes, cleavage and ovulation for a start).

Gender imbalance in the tech world needs to change for obvious reasons – equality, sexism, discrimination, injustice, all come to mind – but also for the progression of the industry itself.

“Such patterns are especially troubling given ample evidence of the critical benefits diversity brings to innovation, problem-solving, and creativity,” the NCWIT report states.

You think Siri, on-line gaming, The Google Algorithm, and interactive maps are impressive?

Wait till you see what women can come up with.

via GIPHY