Ada Lovelace, the woman known as the world’s first computer programmer, was born in 1815.
She was an exception in her time and, almost 200 years later, while women in technology aren’t exactly the exception, neither are they the rule.
Vancouver’s Sandra Wear is going into schools to try to change that, inviting teenage girls to a coding boot camp, Be Like Ada, an initiative that has the support of the University of B.C. and B.C.’s tech sector.
“It is a big problem,” said Wear, a tech entrepreneur whose first venture into the industry saw her co-found DocSpace, a company that was acquired by Critical Path in 2000 for $568 million.
“Girls are being told at 13 they are not good at science and math,” she said. “We’re hurting ourselves. Not only is this unrealized potential but how are we going to fill jobs?”
It’s a situation that’s not being solved simply with diversity policies among employers. Most recently, Google went public with its diversity stats, which show 30 per cent of its global workforce are women and just 17 per cent in its core tech operations.
If young women look around computer science classes at universities or at tech workplaces and see women in the minority, it doesn’t help.
“The other challenge isn’t just getting them to apply,” said Wear. “Once they are in that environment, it is making them feel welcome.”
Elizabeth Croft knows what it’s like to be a woman in male-dominated classes and, as the associate dean in the UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science, she is taking a leading role in changing that for the generations of women following her.
This year some 29 per cent of the first-year students in the faculty will be women, up from 20 per cent five years ago.
“It’s important that everybody participate, both boys and girls have a lot to contribute,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve done enough to get our message out that computer science and engineering are great.”
“We’re not all looking like Dilbert, we’re not all geeks. Coding rocks; we need to get that message out there. Coding is cool; it’s fun, it’s not anti-social.
“And it’s a way to change the world, to connect people, to save lives.”
The goal of Be Like Ada is to increase the number of female engineering grads until they represent half of graduating classes and to double the number of engineers in Canada. Be Like Ada is hosting a coding boot camp July 19 for 500 high school girls, with instructors and mentors from B.C.’s educational and tech sectors on hand to sell coding as a “superpower” for girls. The cost is $45 and registration is online here.
The idea isn’t to convert everyone to coding. It’s a stepping-stone. For today’s youth, coding literacy should be as standard as reading literacy, according to Wear.
“You don’t need to be coding full time but it permeates everything,” she said. “It’s like reading.
“Everybody needs to be able to read and write but it doesn’t mean you need to do it full-time.”
The day will involve teaching the girls the fundamentals of programming but will also introduce them to role models and potential careers in engineering and technology. Wear is planning to follow up with an online community for the participants so they’ll continue to have a connection both to others who are interested in similar careers and to mentors in the community.
Kirsten Sutton, vice-president and managing director of SAP Labs Canada and chair of the B.C. Technology Industry Association board, sees initiatives such as Be Like Ada and others as important in encouraging more young women to pursue technology as a career.
“Here in Vancouver, we are at approximately at 29 per cent of women in tech roles,” she said of SAP. “That is pretty standard, 70/30 is pretty standard and it lowers as you get into management. That’s at 24 per cent now.
“We are very excited to be part of this, we look forward to the boot camp day. We’re hoping there are girls who walk out of there with a very different idea of what they could do.”
Be Like Ada also has the support of the B.C. Innovation Council. The council’s president and CEO Greg Caws sees such encouragement for young women as critical to the sector.
“There are many, many women going into professions — for example law and other things — because there are many other women there,” he said. “But in the sciences and engineering it’s still a bit of a tough slog.”
The father of two daughters are who are in sciences and engineering attributes his daughters’ interest in their fields to both his work and the work of his wife, Catherine Caws, who is a professor specializing in computer-aided language learning.
Coding is all about creativity, a message Be Like Ada hopes to impart to participants in its boot camp.
“We need more young women involved in coding. It’s a tremendous career, it pays well and it allows you to work from anywhere,” said Caws.