I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t riddled with self doubts about coding when I looked into it. Most of it was along the lines of, will I be good enough for it to become my career after doing a course? As usual, they were mostly a fear of the unknown and there were some that promptly got dismissed. The following doubts however are very real indeed and something that I could take control of by stepping into coding in the first place.
Am I technical enough to be good at coding? In other words, as someone whose work had always been about navigating around nuances and adapting to changes in the business, there were very few moments when my work involved technical concepts and actually followed a logical flow of process. But just because I haven’t done it, doesn’t mean I can’t learn to, right? Let’s try learning a language for a few weeks and see how it feels. And as it turns out, pretty good!
Which grew into what I now think is a fairly unfounded fear: Are men better at this? When it comes to getting to grips with technical knowledge and programming — what if I’m nowhere near as good? But is that truly so? It might have appeared to be the case in my former workplace, as all our developers were men and it was a very male dominated company. But does that not reflect the lack of gender diversity in the profession and industry itself, rather than asserting women cannot become software engineers?
Like many STEM fields, the perception of masculinity in the tech industry has influenced women’s aspirations and I feel this probably started quite a long way back in school. In fact, let’s share a rather anecdotal experience. When I was doing my A levels in an all-girls school, computing was not offered as a subject, even though the boys school across the road had it. Thinking back on it, it is simply ridiculous to claim there was no interest from girls in computing then and it is a decision of the school to not offer it as a subject. As a result, no one from our sixth form went on to study a computing related subject at university.
With such stereotyped exposure to computing in our education system, it is no wonder fewer women enter the field. There are of course those who will say, many programmers learned coding on their own without formal computing education so for it to be offered in school or not shouldn’t make a difference. That is also true, however with children being presented gender stereotyped professions early on and therefore gravitate towards either more male or female subjects and professions, they have no real understanding of their potential or interest in the subject until they try it. At the end of the day, young girls are less likely to ‘try’ coding and women in the workplace are less likely to change their career path to software engineering, as opposed to say, HR.
Just by doing a quick search, you can see there is no lack of debate and literature when it comes to why there are less women in the industry. There is however one thing that is clear — women who are now working as software engineers excel in their work and are by no means inferior to their male counterparts. And yet, it is a completely different matter to battle against gender stereotypes and encourage more girls and women to pursue a career in coding. Fortunately, I am aware gender disparity is being addressed these days and there are actually many great initiatives out there that support women in tech and fascilitate their entry into the industry.
For one, during my initial phone call with Makers, I was delighted to hear they were passionate about widening access to the industry for women and those of under-represented backgrounds. They offer a discount for course fees and I was later thrilled to have been accepted for a Women Who Code scholarship. If you are thinking about doing a coding course, do ask what they are doing for under-represented communities and do not be discouraged by what may still seem like a very male dominated field.
