The Tech Field and Us

I am sure many of you, my girlfriends, have grown up with Barbie dolls. Just like me! I was very fond of Barbies. I also had a massive collection of kitchen sets, makeup kits and stuffed animals.

On the other hand, my brothers were busy building towers out of blocks, messing with robot building kits, solving jigsaw puzzles or racing cars on HotWheels tracks.

I enjoyed RomCom, thrillers and drama much more than sci-fi movies, and I still do.

While I love my childhood and teenage, I feel that the cultivation of a few different, additional habits to it would have caused wonders. This post is, as the title says, about increasing the percentage of women in tech. Stick around as I discuss how we need to bring about a few changes in the upbringing of girls.

It is an attempt towards awakening girls, their parents and schools to start changing the way girls have been brought up traditionally.


                                                                   WOMEN IN TECH

Quoting Jack Ma

52 percent of our company is women. 35 percent of our management staff is women. 23 percent of our senior management is women. We’ve had a female CEO, a female chairman, a female CPO, CFO, etc. Our company also has a lot of female engineers, and of course a lot of female PhDs.      

 (check out Jack-Ma-On-Women-In-Tech)

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. All these fields have seen an abundance of male participation. But that doesn't mean women are not capable. It only points towards the way women and men have been programmed differently, for many centuries. Yet, women don't fail to stand out and mark their presence. Katherine Johnson (NASA Space Scientist), Grace Hopper (Inventor and Computer Scientist), Rebecca Cole (Health Reformer and Doctor) are just a few of the amazing women who have been my heroes (or she-roes).

There is a need to include more and more women in the tech field. And as we see today, many companies are willing to increase the percentage of their women employees. There are plenty of opportunities out there, but girls we must become worthy of them.

GeoSmart Flip Bot

It all starts from kindergarten. Parents should encourage their daughters with games like GeoSmart Flip Bot, which provides a fun experience of building a robot car from scratch by joining together various parts. Another very cool toy is Kano Star Wars. It is a coding kit. The instructions can be followed even by 5-year olds to build the kit's LED-lighted hand control module equipped with sensors to track hand movements. Such toys will help to develop technological passion among girls at a young age.

Small activities have significant impacts: One of my favourite math teachers, Mrs Salehittal ma'am, used to assign tasks to each one of us, which consisted of studying a particular math topic and presenting it in front of the entire class. We were encouraged to be as creative as we can. I stumbled upon Kaprekar's constant during the search for project topic. I found it to be very fascinating and presented it in the class. No one was aware of this constant before my presentation. I was appreciated and applauded for it. This increased my confidence and interest in STEM. Such activities should be promoted in schools to encourage the active participation of students, especially girls in the STEM fields. 

Code early, rise early!  I feel that there is a severe need for all students, not just girls, to start coding early. And by early, I mean around seventh grade. Coding increases one's analytical thinking. It develops a tendency to solve problems algorithmically. My friends who started to code at a young age can enjoy the tech field much more right now. From my own experience, I can tell you that girls can face some challenges in coding. I wasn't very fond of it at first. I did not like to give coding competitions. On the other hand, my guy friends enjoyed it like a sport. It took me a lot of efforts to improve, but once you start doing it, it's a different kind of high! I feel these efforts can be reduced to zero if you start coding early. Google Code-In, CodeWars and CodeChef are doing a great job towards introducing coding competitions for high school students. The awareness about such competitions and hackathons needs to be increased.

Making friends with a computer!  Girls must learn to use computers in childhood itself so that there is no comp-phobia! Some women are intimidated by even the thought of using simple web applications like Gmail. This fear must be tackled with at a young age. Parents must let their children perform few activities on their own on the computer, helping them whenever they are stuck.

Finally, we are barbies too! Being interested in technology doesn't mean we have to continually think about solving problems and building solutions. A woman does well in a company because she has a natural tendency to care for the customer, empathise and do honest business. We must keep alive the soft side of our nature. So don't quit dancing, singing or any of your hobbies. Just inculcate a new hobby - 'technology'! Cause we are not just barbies, we are wonder women!