Today, 1 in 5 jobs held in tech are held by men. However, up until the 1980s, the percentage of graduate women in computer science grew at the same rate as in law and medicine. Coding like a girl explore the issues of access, education and leadership for women in the IT industry through the user interface of a 1980s retro game.
Coding like a girl tells the stories of three young women - Angie, Hyasinta and Eva - as they overcome a myriad of obstacles to achieve their dreams.
By playfully combining short videos, quizzes and animations, this game aims to highlight the positive role women in technology play in advancing the field of business and computing.
To provide a global perspective, we traveled to three different locations - Peru, Tanzania, and Germany - to speak to local communities where women are taking the lead and closing the gender gap in information and communication technology.
The story addresses the some of the major themes behind the UN's sustainable development goals (SDG goals) such as providing equal opportunities for women and enabling technology to promote the empowerment of women.
Our next step is to continue to develop the recognition and support for this project and to enhance the interactive by including more stories. The long term goal is to use coding like a girl as an educational resource for companies and schools in order to directly address the challenges women in ICT are facing.
Since launching in August 2018, Coding like a girl has received over 70,000 unique visitors in English with an average time on page of 3:13. Numerous organizations which promote ICT skills among young women have featured this innovative approach to storytelling.
Our main character in Peru, Angie, has become a very vocal advocate for introducing young women to the tech community.
Even though coding like a girl has already published in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and Arabic, our work is not done. The team is still actively engaged on social media conversations (@CodingLikeGirl) and enhancing the story's visibility. To this end, the project has just been nominated to the Gabo Awards (Premios Gabriel Garcia Marquez de Periodismo) in the category of innovation.
