New Film ‘CodeGirl’ Aims to Add Girl Power to the Tech Industry
The documentary follows high school girls from around the world as they compete for $10,000 at a coding competition.
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama discussed a bold initiative that would teach all American students a key skill to help ensure they were “job-ready” out of high school: coding.
The president asked Congress to allocate $4 billion to states and another $100 million to school districts “so that our elementary, middle, and high schools can provide opportunities to learn computer science for all students,” he said. While most technology experts agree that learning to code is vital in the 21st-century economy, the number of women working in the industry is dismally low.
Despite the prevalence of mobile technology and that young men and women are glued to their phones, around 92 percent of software developers are men, and only 7 percent of tech companies are founded by women. As organizations grapple with ways to recruit and retain more female employees, most agree that encouraging girls and young women to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers is the answer.
Read the whole story on TakePart.com.