How Code For Cape Town Aims To Empower Women In The Tech Industry
How Code For Cape Town Aims To Empower Women In The Tech Industry. Code4CT works to make sure that young women – particularly black women – are included in the tech industry. The central mission behind the Code for Cape Town programme is to see more young women elect to pursue tech-related study paths and enter the workforce equipped with the skills they need to hold influence in the tech industry.
Computer Science, Engineering and IT should all be options that young women consider as study fields, but right now, there are 5 times fewer girls taking IT as a school subject in the Western Cape than boys. Through lack of exposure to coding, many young women think coding is “scary”, “difficult” and “boring”.
Code for Cape Town intervenes and introduces young women to coding during high school. The company gives young women the chance to discover that coding is creative and a powerful tool to create change. Most important of all, it let’s young women discover that they are more than able to code!
Over a 5 year period, the initiative identified 200 talented girls, taught them coding skills and nurtured their interest in technology through an extramural coding programme. As girls navigated critical career choices, the programme allowed them to experience that coding is achievable, creative and powerful, avoiding girls self-deselecting from Computer Science fields on the assumption that it’s ‘not for me’.
37% of these young women continued on into STEM-related studies and another 48% continued on into other studies equipped with robust coding skills that will augment their impact in their chosen fields. In response to the needs of its students, the company expanded its suite of programmes that support young coders, which it now runs as CodeSpace.
