She Codes Founder Kate Kirwin
Now more than ever we need people in tech, but where are the women? The sector is booming, and is anticipated to grow to 1 million workers in Australia by 2025. We must act now to create these jobs over the next few years.
My journey started in 2014. I had no tech background when I attended my first ‘how to code’ presentation. I quickly became fascinated at the prospect of building websites, apps, and games with just some words, logic and magic.
From there, I tried to self-teach but soon discovered I needed a community to help motivate me and be that safe space to ask questions when I got stuck. And so, with the help of some of my own mentors, She Codes was born.
We started by running one day workshops for women and over the past eight years we have taught more than 5,000 women across metro and regional areas in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia.
As our workshops expanded, we soon realised this wasn’t moving the needle fast enough. According to the ACS Digital Pulse report, only 29 percent of roles in technology are held by women (compared to 28 per cent a few years ago).
There are still very pervasive stereotypes of the tech industry. The strong stereotype seems to be a man in a hoodie in a dark basement with lines of code washing over his face. I’ve never met anyone who codes like this.
The reality is there are still many barriers preventing women from entering and staying in technical roles. Some of the most common include a lack of opportunity to discover tech early in their lives, a lack of role models (78% of high school girls could not name a famous woman in tech), lack of encouragement and community, financial constraints and consideration of work/family commitments.
I have interacted with dozens of companies who say diversity is a high priority for them but there is still very little tangible action taking place. To make change, we need action. Not just hosting a breakfast on International Women’s Day, or inviting a woman to join your panel discussion, but actual meaningful actions, 365 days a year.
She Codes stepped up to tackle these challenges by creating She Codes Plus. We went about creating the program by carefully considering how we can make it radically different, and impact driven at every step.
What we developed was a six-month tech program providing an alternative learning pathway for women to enter or advance in the tech industry. Running on a part-time basis, outside of business hours, makes it perfect for full-time workers and women returning to the workforce.
Our project-based program allows women to undertake five unique projects over a six-month period, including creating a website in HTML/CSS, manipulating data with Python and using Django and React JS.
The impact we’ve made through She Codes has been life changing and I’m proud of the doors it has opened for so many women.
Many of our graduates have formed highly valuable connections with industry, dozens have returned as mentors and some have even gone onto win awards. Of our 160 Plus alumni, 72 per cent have pivoted into tech roles.
One of our recent alumnae shared that she doubled her salary in less than six months after graduating and attributes a lot of that success to the technical skills and confidence she developed through She Codes.
Learning a new skill, building a business and changing careers is hard, but all of these are so much easier when you are surrounded by a supportive community of like-minded people.
Where do we go from here?
If you are a business owner, or senior leader hiring in tech – feel free to reach out to discuss how we can help improve diversity in your team.
If you are already working in tech – share your story, stories are powerful.
If you aren’t comfortable with sharing publicly you could volunteer as a mentor – either with us or the dozens of other organizations working in the coding for kids’ space.
If you are reading this and are not sure if tech is for you – I encourage you to back yourself, try some online coding challenges, and find a community to hang out with. I promise we are friendly (and often have cupcakes).
Written by
Kate Kirwin, Founder of She Codes Australia and Senior Programs Manager at Spacecubed
Kate is a passionate advocate for women in STEM and the innovation ecosystem. As the Founder of She Codes, she has hustled to source more than a million dollars from government and industry to support women in STEM projects. Kate graduated from Curtin with a Bachelor of Commerce in Law and International Relations in 2014. In 2019 she was named a Rising Star by the West Australian newspaper and two years later was awarded a Business News 40Under40 for her outstanding leadership. In 2022 she won a Champion of Change award from Women in Digital, propelling her onto a national stage, and has recently spoken at a tech conference in Singapore on the topic of Diversity and Inclusion.
