Women power in programming and development

Today is International Women’s day, Facebook News feed is filled with women power posts and women achievements in various fields but I don’t generally see much news about women in programming field! Whats going on? Are women bad coders? lets find out.

Recently, a gender research was made on Github. Github is a code repository hosting service where developers can collaborate and contribute to open-source projects by making pull requests with code changes. pull requests are accepted if they improve or add value to original code.

As per the reports, pull requests made by women are more likely to be approved than requests made by men. Approval rate of women was 78.6% and approval rate of men was 74.6% It does mean that ‘Women are good coders’. Details about the research can be found here

Research was made on 3 Million pull requests where around 2.5 Million requests were made by men and rest by women. Considering number of requests, men are far ahead as number of software developers gender ratio is around 80:20, soon this might change as lot of women are getting into software development now a days.

According to a study, only 18% of engineers in Silicon valley startups are women. It was 12% last year, increase of 6% in just 1 year is significant. It might increase at a greater rate from this year. detailed stats embedded below.

Organisations that help women learn to code

There are non-profit organizations that help women learn coding through boot camps, tutorials and also support them with job opportunities. Few of them are as follows.

Made With Code

Made With code is a Google initiative to empower women with computer programming skills. Made With Code website is loaded with useful resources and projects which makes it the best place for women to get started with coding.

Women Who Code

Women Who Code (WWCode) is a global 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers.
women power - womenwhocode

Girls Who Code

Girls Who Code programs work to inspire, educate, and equip girls with the computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities.
women power - girlswhocode

Girl Develop It

Girl Develop It is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning web and software development. Through in-person classes and community support, Girl Develop It helps women of diverse backgrounds achieve their technology goals and build confidence in their careers and their every day lives.
women power - girlswhocode

Black Girls Code

Black Girls CODE is devoted to showing the world that black girls can code, and do so much more. By reaching out to the community through workshops and after school programs, Black Girls CODE introduces computer coding lessons to young girls from underrepresented communities in programming languages such as Scratch or Ruby on Rails. Black Girls CODE has set out to prove to the world that girls of every color have the skills to become the programmers of tomorrow.

Wrapping up

Men are always ahead in programming but we need women also to be an active part. Women have great potential in programming. With all the support from many non-profit organisations and tech giant Google, hopefully we see more female coders soon. More women power, go girls!