Coding is swiftly becoming an all-encompassing field where location, educational background, and gender are no more barriers in determining the opportunities available for an individual. It is now less of a male-dominated domain as a plethora of women turning up for computer programming jobs and coding competitions.
As per HackerRank, the job portal for coders, global code sprints has the highest number of women coders from India participating in it. Global code sprints is a day’s coding competition that invites coders from every country of the world.
A survey by TechGig further strengthens the above-mentioned claim by HackerRank. It says that the participation of females in various coding platforms increased to 45% in the year 2017 as compared to 35% in the year 2016. In fact, the TechGig Code Gladiator competition that took place in the year 2017 set a new record with 47,000 women coders participating in the event. However, the TechGig Geek Goddess 2018 that held in Bengaluru broke the record with 50,000 women coders registering for the competition.
Broad thinking leads to best solutions to any pain point and women are, undoubtedly, great thinkers. Corporates and organizations have started to accept this fact. Thus, one can observe that there is a great participation of women coders in the workforce.
Apart from being a part of the workforce, many women are also taking interest in the tech field during their education phase. As per Anuradha Biswas, co-founder of a tech firm Prakat Solution, there is a hike in women students for IT courses. Many firms now encourage diversity groups so as to ensure that there are more and more females in the industry. Django Girls, Google’s Women Techmakers, etc. are some of the tech communities that strive to boost the visibility and involvement of women in the tech industry.
As per the researchers at California Polytechnic State University and North Carolina State University in the US, code written by women receive higher approval rating as compared to code written by men. The conclusion was drawn after the analyzing the behavior of GitHub’s software developers.
Computer Programming has an excellent scope and thus, on the same line and with the same understanding, Varsha Prabhu, an alumnus of National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal and the winner of TechGig Geek Goddess, believes that more women should foray in the world of coding.
Coding is not merely about writing codes and instructing machines and programs to run in a certain way. Rather when a person learns to code, it opens up a new dimension in her thought process, which, in turn, influences how she interacts with the outside world.
Apart from the aforementioned achievements and numbers, there are reports and studies that prove Indian women coders hold a high rank on the global chart.
But all that glitters is not gold. As per the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017, the global gender gap widened in the year 2017 for the very first time since 2006, thereby, curbing the growth of women in the tech industry of India.
On the whole, considering the fast-paced growth of women in the coding profession and its sudden halt, it is indispensable to review and readdress the gender disparity in the industry. The human resource professionals, the coding experts, and all those at the helms of organizations must shoulder the responsibility to encourage gender diversity at all levels and departments. Lastly, it’s time that we break the stereotype that women can’t code and inspire and educate more and more women about coding and the great potential, as well as, the scope that it holds.
