The pandemic threatens to widen the gender gap in tech

The strain on the education system is getting worse. With COVID cases surging, we see school shutting back down and students are trying to learn at home with limited resources widening the digital divide. Meanwhile, we have more women dropping out of the workforce which causes damage to the gender gap. So now what? [MUSIC] Thank you, Reshma Saujani for joining us. CEO of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that really has become a movement to help encourage girls to enter the field of computer sciences. With all the work that your team has been doing to really close the gender gap and get more women into these fields, what are you worried about now in how the pandemic has affected this movement? Pre-COVID, we had started talking a lot about how this isn't a pipeline problem anymore. You're seeing more and more young women wanting to major in computer science having it offered in schools, right? If you look at the numbers of women who are majoring in computer science and colleges when we started Girls Who Code in 2012, it was in and around 18%. Some schools is almost at 30% now, right? And post COVID what we're really seeing, again, continuing to see this culture problem, but we're also seeing a lack of access to hardware, right, you hear stories of families that are using one device amongst three people. You're seeing a lack of Wi-Fi access, and high speed internet which you need in order to do zoom school as my son calls it, right? So there are huge, huge equity gaps that you're seeing happen all across the country and the digital divide is real. And over the past 10, 20 years, we just haven't made enough progress on it. I also can't help but think about how I've seen reports of women dropping out of the workforce now because of everything going on. And I cannot, I think, all right, is that gonna have a ripple effect down the line when girls are looking for mentors? Absolutely. I did a call with some of our girls who put partners and it was the number one problem that they flagged. That they've seen really senior women that are leaving the tech workforce. And when young women come in that first year, that second year, you kind of look around and you say, okay, who else is here? Who's in leadership? Is there a path for me? Is there upward mobility? And again pre COVID we did this report with Accenture, we're almost 50% of women in tech we're leaving within the first four years, 50%. And a lot of it had to do with not having mentors, you cannot be what you cannot see. And that problem has been exacerbated post COVID. What has the Girls Who Code team seen in terms of how we can keep pushing this education forward even if learning is virtual? There's so many kids, millions of kids across the country that are remote learning right now because they don't have the capacity to. They don't have Wi-Fi, they don't have a device, right? They're not in a ideal remote learning environment at home. So it's just not happening for so many. And when we pivoted to moving our both our summer immersion programs and our girls clubs, virtually, we really took a step back and said let's think about this from a design perspective. We designed a program that was synchronous and asynchronous, right? So that allowed for more flexibility during the day. We sent hotspots to every single student who needed it. We sent devices to every single student who needed it. And for a lot of students we made sure that teachers actually met with students before. So they got to know them and they felt invested in them and they understood what their limitations, right? We're in this moment in terms of their learning, Is there something positive that does come from being able to connect virtually if you can't be in person? Listen, I will say this. There's a lot of positive things, so one I think is that you can reach anybody technically. When you have in place programming you limit, I remember when we were doing summer program in Menlo Park, and we would try get girls from Oakland to go there. They were like that is an hour and a half commute. I can't go into a classroom or Facebook because it just takes so much time to get there. So even if the offering was there, it just wasn't set up in a way that was conducive to people's life and into their time. Now, when you're getting online, I can reach a girl anywhere in Alabama, in Oakland and New Jersey and New York City, in Bangalore in Jamaica, anywhere, any girl out there in the world. You've raised your hand and you want to learn how to code, I can teach you now. That's powerful, right? And, again, if we can continue to solve the digital divide and the hardware divide, we really can reach any child. And there's something about the chat function, right, where arguably you could probably get more participation from women, right? Or for people who are kind of boring if they're not saying exactly the perfect thing. You can get more equity in terms of who is participating, right? We have to see this as something that's not going anywhere, and how do we use it as a tool to teach more people, to create more opportunity, to do more equity. [BLANK_AUDIO] I wanted to ask a little bit about some of the work that Girls Who Code does, for those who don't know, in particular, scholarships. One thing that caught my attention recently, was that you were working with a toy company, American Girl Dolls, because there's a doll that is themed to being a 1980s computer check, so to speak. [LAUGH] Gamer girl Courtney, yep. Exactly, gamer girl Courtney. So I saw that and I go, okay, that isn't something that you would typically think of is like, okay, is that going to get a girl to code, but can you talk about some of that work and why that, too is just as important as maybe taking a class in coding, how is this all kind of coming together? So I think culture matters. And since the 1980s, I would say we have intentionally from Revenge of the Nerds, right or Silicon Valley on HBO, to the Barbie Doll that said, I hate math, let's go shopping instead. To the movie Mean Girls, where she erases letter A in her math test and crosses out for D just to get the affections of a boy. Everything that we've been signalling to girls is that math and science is not for you, that you're not good enough, that you're not smart enough, that it's a boys thing. And so they've been opting out intentionally, right? And culture has very much played that role. And so when we started Girls Who Code we wanted to offer obviously programming, come to our programs and learn how to code. But, I also was like, we're gonna disrupt culture. We're gonna make coding cool. My goal, was after decade for girls to be, I want to be a computer scientist, right? That's for me, that's a girl's thing. When you think about medicine or law, we don't associate a gender with it. But we very much associate a gender with being a computer scientist. And so partnerships like with American Girl, and Courtney and having this really cool Gamer Girl as a doll, it makes girls like imagine that they can be anything and everything. Now you can be anything and everything to it matters, culture matters what you see, what you play with, who you hear, that matters. With everything going on right now, family stressed out trying to do school at home, some not having access to all of the great opportunities that they could normally. What do we as a community do, what do we take away from this moment to make sure the next generation isn't too left behind? One of the things I think a lot of people learned after this past election is that your voice matters, that you can organize, that you can protest, that you can mobilize, and you can bring about change. And I feel like for a lot of parents, we've just haven't been using our voice. We're not getting mad enough. We're not getting frustrated enough. We're not asking enough questions. We're not demanding enough for all of our children, not just our own children. So when I think about my kids are gonna be fine, I'm not worried about my kids. I'm worried about America's kids. And so we got to organize, we got to mobilize, we got to ask the questions why in this amazing country, where we know education is everything, the land of opportunity that we don't prioritize opening our schools. That why is that not the number one priority in our country? We have to ask ourselves that question, and we need to demand that it is. It's been a good conversation. Thank you Reshma, I appreciate that. For anyone who's interested in learning more about Girls Who Code, check them out online. And are there programs that people can sign up for now? How does it work? Absolutely, go online girlswhocode.com. We have virtual summer programs coming back next summer. So sign up on our website and we'll even hear all about them. They're free. Everything we do is free. We have virtual girls who code clubs all across the country for third graders on up. There's not a town, county or parish that we are not in. So if you wanna learn how to code, we will teach you, so come to our website. Thanks for your time, Reshma. We've been talking to CEO of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani. If you want to learn more, visit their website or read more about it on CNET.com. [MUSIC]