The Importance of Tech Education for Girls: What the Pandemic has Taught Us
COVID-19 shows that girls’ STEM education and ensuring girls in tech are supported and motivated has never been more important. Without a doubt, the true value and contributions of our fantastic front line workers have also been brought to the fore. Sadly thousands of lives have been lost. For most of us, the Coronavirus crisis is about staying at home, social distancing correctly, and looking after the most vulnerable the best we can. But for those in the worlds of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), the stakes have never been higher.
Talented coders are needed to help telemedicine practitioners stay in touch with their patients and record data correctly. Telemedicine means seeing a health professional remotely, sometimes via web-based systems, and sometimes using video calling software. This is a fast-growing medium in a world where going to the doctor for a minor ailment puts you or your family at risk.
In the States, lack of modernisation and a coding language called COBOL that few modern programmers know has meant that unemployment systems in at least 12 states have practically ground to a halt.
Here in Britain, engineers at Mercedes-AMG Formula One teamed up with University College London to create a CPAP machine to help COVID-19 sufferers without them having to go onto ventilators.
Imagine having the skills to fix those problems or come up with those life-saving solutions. Imagine your girls one day having not only the talent but the confidence to walk into a role like that.
The Gender Bias
It’s a sad fact that girls and women in tech are still not represented the same way as their male counterparts. THE OECD reports that boys are three times as likely to aim for careers in the sciences than girls. But this has nothing to do with skills or talents. It’s about how we engage with our kids, and how we break the damaging boundaries of societal stereotypes.
Many girls and young women still see technology and engineering jobs as “not for them”, thanks to a lack of engagement in their formative years. But in a world where new ways to process data, new medical technology, and better science could literally save lives every day, it’s even more important than ever to let our girls see the potential they have, and how they can start applying it even as young as ten years old, if not younger.
How is Girls Into Coding Helping?
Girls Into Coding is all about finding those ways to get your girls and young women enthused about working with technology. This London-based Community Interest Company (CIC)runs a range of fun and educational events, allowing girls to meet other girls and women who are already working (and playing!) with STEM in a variety of fun and exciting ways. Speakers at events include a range of inspiring women in tech and science, including Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon, MBE, a staunch supporter of girls & women in STEM, head of Stemettes and host of the Evening Standard podcast, “Women Tech Charge.” Other influential names include Simona Cotin, a cloud developer advocate at Microsoft, Caroline Keep, director of Spark Penketh, the first maker space school in the UK, Yewande Akinola, MBE, an award-winning engineer, and the many other inspiring speakers who have shared their STEM stories.
Seeing these women at the absolute top of their game in careers that for many years, girls were told were “only for boys”, is so eye-opening for many youngsters. Suddenly, they realise they can. They can go for their goals, they can choose the subjects that they love, not just those that they think they should. With the right encouragement from their parents, they can find a supportive space to discuss their ideas, innovations, and inventions.
New Technologies During a Pandemic
You might not realise that there’s a whole world of innovation going on out there right now. While you and your friends and families learn new ways to communicate or get to grips with using these technologies full time rather than a couple of times a week, software engineers and coders are working frantically in the background ensuring these services keep running smoothly, whilst looking for new ways to make things even easier for consumers.
Supermarkets suddenly found that they had to introduce new code into their websites to deal with enormous digital queues. Businesses big and small have used any number of current and emerging technologies to allow their workers to safely go home and still keep working. Can you imagine this pandemic without the benefits that technology brings us?
That’s why it is so vital to get our girls engaged now. Let’s show them how vital technology is. Let’s focus on the benefits we’re enjoying, and talk about the inspiring girls in tech like those who attend the Girls Into Coding events, bringing their boundless enthusiasm, ideas, and those all-important questions that open up discussion.
Around one in four boys currently goes into a technology or engineering role but only one in twelve girls. It’s time to really work on fixing that imbalance- not just because it’s the right thing to do. Not just because girls deserve the same opportunities as boys. But as well as those vital points, because the world needs science and technology now, more than ever, to fix problems, offer solutions, and to help bring us all back together as safely as possible.
To find out more about Girls Into Coding, visit our new website, https://www.girlsintocoding.com, and sign up to our newsletter to be among the first to know about future events!
