Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code

Reshma Saujani, Girls Who Code
Inman Connect New York 2013
Jan. 16, 2013

I ran for Congress in 2010 in the Upper West Side. Some of the wealthiest zip codes in America. Just over in Astoria, Queens, we have some of the poorest neighborhoods. Upper East Side, iPods everywhere; in Queens, they're lucky to have a computer.

The unemployment rate for people under 25 is twice the national average. There will be 1.4 million jobs in computing, and less than 29 percent can be filled by Americans. In a room of 25 engineers, 3 will be women. Women represent only 12 percent of CS grads, and that number was 37 percent in 1984 -- an 87 percent decline, even with more technology in our world. This is a huge problem for girls. Less than 0.3 percent of high school girls say they're interested in CS.

What's the problem? You know like I know that boys and girls are the same at math and science, in fact, girls score better. It's not about interest, they have equal interest in STEM. Women want to change the world. But they envision somebody typing. Also, it's a cultural problem. There's a "Math Sucks" shirt at Forever 21.

We need more engineers. Manufacturing is transitioning to tech. But half of the population not moving in that direction.

In 2010, I started thinking about these girls, and developed "Girls Who Code." I worked with CS groups, NYU, Intel, Columbia, and we came up with an eight week program. Brought them in, taught them to code: build a website, build a mobile app, talk to an engineer about a business plan. These girls had enormous potential, and the things they were interesting in building were designed to change the world.

One girl found her father had cancer at four, and wanted to be a doctor. In two weeks she built an algorithm to detect whether cancer was benign or malignant. She was 16. Another girl was approached by a local bodega owner because they heard she builds websites. Now she builds websites for immigrant families. Also, if you teach one girl, she will teach four others, teach one boy, he will teach zero. There's a multiplying effect with these girls. 100 percent say they want to major or minor in CS, 100 percent have continued their education, 100 percent have taught another, and are building on the skills we've given them.

One of the most powerful things about GWC is the role that companies have played in closing the gender gap. It was just an idea, but I got to meet with the CEO at Twitter. I said, "You have 530 engineers, maybe 30 of them women, maybe 5 of them people color. But women tweet, Facebook, and blog more than men." And they got it. In six months, we got every single major tech company to invest in GWC to help close the innovation cap.

In NYC, 76 percent report they don't have access to computers in schools. Less than 1 percent of federal funding went to close the funding gap in STEM. It's up to us. I have one ask: please go home and think of one girl in your life and encourage her to learn how to code, have her sign up on our site. We'll be launching in eight markets, several in NY, CA, Detroit. I hope you start speaking to the educators in your community, tell them CS is important. We have less than 1,500 CS teachers in the whole country, it's a major problem.

Thanks for listening to me. Teach your boys too. Questions?

Q. What is the typical profile?

No profile. The application process is about their interest in tech. I had to send half my girls a computer to go home with, they didn't have one. They had no experience with building sites or mobile apps or talking business plan. Our profile is to have a passion. Willing to spend her entire summer inside rather than outside.

Q. My 6-year-old has a blog, she blogs. What's the earliest to code? Too early?

A. It's actually not. You should pick up Scratch for Dummies. A lot of parents are teaching their kids Scratch. Pretty easy to pick up. If your child is showing an interest in tech, putting things together, start as soon as you can.

How much is the gender gap due to the way males and females are wired differently. Erector sets for guys. Girls would make use of what the guys built. Guys linear, maybe, I tend to think girls think more holistically. Any way to foster that in girls? Code is a linear process.

A. In my experience, Girls are better coders than boys. I think that's false. We think girls don't want to tear apart, so we don't give them things to tear apart. When we start encouraging our girls... men want to make money. Women want to make money. We exposed them to businesses that we think they might be more interested in. Fashion. When we did hackathons, boys built games. Girls built things to make a community better. The things they're interesting is different, but their capacity to build is not.

Q. Plans to come to Canada?
A. Don't have statistics on Canada, but the U.S. is behind others, behind Cuba, China, India, Israel. MOst of these countries are teaching kids at 6, 7, 8, creating an entire generation of engineers. Wasn't sure we would have interest, but we got a million impressions at launch, thousands of tweets who want to code. I feel we in this country don't invest in our girls. It's challenging to raise the resources we need. Would have been easier in India. I have to commit to changing things in this country, and then we can take it to other places. But we are hoping to have our curriculum online, it's all about sharing it.

Q. How do you see it happening? Should 6-7 year olds be learning it in science class? Math lass?

A. My father probably learned the same subjects as I did, even though the world changed enormously. Should we be changing what the core classes that our kids are learning today. I thing CS should be one of the core classe. Right now, every state decides the standards, feds can't dictate it. Conversations happening with governors all across the coutry, make CS mandatory. Goal is to teach a million girls to code by 2020. We're going to try. Next year, we're talking to public schools on getting our curriculum in, train teachers on our curriculum, we can totally reach our goal, then teach boys how to code.