Women can code

Yesterday evening I was looking on the Google website and I found madewithcode.com. After reading for a while I became interested in the gender gap in Computer science. We have this prejudice that Computer science is something for men, not for women. I've been studying Computer science for over a year now and I still feel like it's a man's world and that I'm not good enough, not smart enough for this. But I'll work hard, maybe harder than others, because I know that it is what I love doing. Sometimes I wonder how come that the women in CS are underrepresented, I have come to the conclusion that it mainly has to do with these two things: 

There aren't a lot of female role models. 

Everyone needs someone they can identify to, but the problem is that there aren't a lot of female web developers in the news. You'll only find them after a little bit of research. For example, the women behind She++ or Girlswhocode, they aren't celebrities but they are so inspiring! Karlie Kloss is also a great role model for girls and women everywhere. 

Schools need to stimulate!

When I used to study Economics in high school, we had the option to choose between an extra hour of German or Informatics class. I chose informatics, we were only with two in that class. We both had a different motivation for choosing the class: I chose it because I was interested in Informatics, I hoped that we would learn webdesign and Photoshop. The other girl in the class chose it because she couldn't stand the German teacher. The class itself wasn't that good eather, we learned how to use Word and Excel. Don't get me wrong, it's important to know these basic skills, but when you've learned it throughout middle school, you kinda know how to use it. We never got in touch with programming and code, which is a shame. Teachers need to integrate computers in their classes more, even if it is for working with Excel. 

I also strongly believe that every country should have programs during breaks (like summer camps) that learn the basics of coding. So for a while I couldn't sleep last night, I had a lot of ideas and projects I wanted to start. I want to help with this mission, I want to create an organisation that makes it possible for girls to get in touch with coding. My little organisation at the moment is this blog, I hope this content will inspire girls to just go for it! We can make it a girls world too!