A few of the world’s biggest tech companies have recently revealed significant gender gaps in their workforces, so it’s good to see that one of them is taking a keen interest in fixing it.
Last week Google announced it will be investing $50 million over three years to encourage more girls to get involved in tech. The initiative, Made with Code, will serve as a tool to get young women excited about learning code and close the gender gap in the tech industry at the beginning — by getting more women interested in enrolling in computer-science courses.
The lack of diversity in the tech industry is something of a concern for leaders in Silicon Valley. Recent statistics show that although there will be 1.4 million tech-related jobs by 2020, there will be just 400,000 computer-science graduates from US schools to fill these roles, according to TIME. This means that U.S. universities are expected produce only enough qualified graduates to fill 29% of these jobs. In order for the industry to continue evolving and innovating, it needs to recruit from more than just 50% of the population.
Along with the new website, Google has been doing research to find out why women opted out tech-focused jobs. According to Girls Who Code the number of women choosing to study computer-science has dropped dramatically from 37% in 1985 to just 12% now. Google found that most girls will have already decided whether they are interested in coding before they decide which university degree to enrol in, which means they need to win them over at a younger age.
It cited four major factors that determined whether girls opted into computer science: social encouragement, self-perception, academic exposure and career perception.
At the program launch Megan Smith, vice president of Google’s research lab Google [x], said that there are a number of ways to turn these figures around, and one of the main goals is to make the program a portal through which girls can see role models.
She told the girls, “We found out that one of the things that happens with high school girls is they sometimes get discouraged from doing code because no one is encouraging you. Nobody’s telling you the value … nobody’s telling you why it’s so impactful on the world. You couldn’t see a lot of heroes.”
She also had a message for the parents, telling them they didn’t need a technical background or knowledge about programming to encourage their kids to learn.
“Just tell her she’ll be good at it because she will be,” Smith said.
Last month Google revealed that just 30% of its entire workforce is female, while women account for just 17% of the technical roles. Other tech companies have followed suit, with Yahoo also sharing its diversity report last week and revealing that less than 40% of its 12,200 employees is female and account for just 15% of technical roles.
Made With Code includes a website with coding projects, stories from female technology role models and resources for parents and is designed to give young girls encouragement through role models and ideas to make computer coding fit into interests they already love. The program has already recruited a number of big name partnerships, including Chelsea Clinton, Mindy Kaling, MIT Media Lab and Girls Scouts of the USA .