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Girls Who Code (also known as GWC) is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. The organization works toward closing the gender employment difference in computing. They host a seven-week Summer Immersion Program, a two-week specialized Campus Program, after school Clubs, a college club, College Loops, and a '' New York Times'' best-selling
Penguin Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain t ...
13-book series. The organization is based in New York and has programs in the United States (all fifty states), Canada, India and the United Kingdom. Girls Who Code has also released many public campaigns to raise awareness of its mission.


Summary

Girls Who Code was founded by
Reshma Saujani Reshma Saujani (born November 18, 1975) is an American lawyer, politician, civil servant, and the founder of the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code, which aims to increase the number of women in computer science and close the gender employment ...
in 2012, who came up with the idea of creating the organization during her run for the United States Congress. Reshma believed that schools along her campaign route lacked female representation in computer science classrooms. The organization began under the White House Science & Technology Initiative. Girls Who Code runs programs during the academic year teaching high school girls computing skills like programming, robotics, and
web design Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...
, with sessions including projects and trips to companies like Twitter and Facebook. As of 2014, there were more than 1,500 Girls Who Code clubs across America, with the organization aiming to teach one million girls to code by 2020. By December 2014, three thousand students had completed a Girls Who Code program, 95% of whom stated they desired to major in computer science in higher education. According to the organization's 2021 report, there are approximately 115,000 college or post college age alumni who have completed the program. In 2019, the organization announced plans to expand to 10,000 clubs in all 50 states. In 2020, Girls Who Code launched a free 2-week virtual Summer Immersion Program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the program serving 5,000 girls in its first year. The organization is sponsored by several software and technology companies including
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, Google, and Microsoft, and in August 2014 received a $1 million contribution from
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
.


History

As of 2015, only 18% of computer science college graduates are women. Reshma Saujani participated in a
TED Talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
where she spoke about the tech industry. The company announced that in 2016 the non-profit organization will be expanding to all 50 states- making it the largest computing program for girls in the United States. In August 2017, the nonprofit launched a 13-book series with
Penguin Random House Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase of ...
, including a nonfiction book, ''Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World'', and several fiction books. By the spring of 2018, Girls Who Code will have reached more than 50,000 girls with their computer science education programs. As of February 2021 Girls Who Code has more than 80,000 college-aged alums who are entering the workforce. Girls Who Code clubs and programs have reached more than 300,000 girls globally as of March 2021. The organization's efforts to close the achievement gender gap have resulted in several honors. Saujani was recognized for 'her vision and efforts to close the gender gap in technology. Girls Who Code alumni include Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser, the creators of the video game Tampon Run. In 2020, Girls Who Code updated its brand design in order to connect better with Generation Z. The new design is called "making waves" because it is based on the shape of formatted code. The indentations used for formatting code create a wave shape. This new brand update involved many different types of waves, a new color palette, a font change and a single-color logo.


Programs


Clubs

The Girls Who Code after school club program is open to middle and high school girls within the ages of 13-18. These clubs are run by college students, teachers, librarians or professionals in the technology industry. Club meeting times vary between clubs but are around 20 weeks with 2 hour meetings per week. The club curriculum is built on four foundational computer science concepts: loops, conditionals, variables and functions. The organization calls these the "core-four." Club activities consist of coding tutorials, preprofessional workshops and community building events. Girls Who Code clubs are active in all fifty states in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom.


Summer Immersion Program

The Summer Immersion Program (SIP) was a seven-week in-person summer camp program offered for girls in 10th and 11th grade to introduce them to the world of coding. The program developed into a two-week virtual program due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These summer camps are based at more than 80 technology companies across the United States, including Facebook, Twitter,
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, Prudential, Microsoft and Sephora. The company at which the SIP is based also offers a mentorship program that matches girls in the camp with women in the company. The core curriculum for the program includes lessons on HTML,
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
and JavaScript programming languages with extra material varying between program sites. The program ends with a final group project, project showcase and graduation ceremony.


Partnerships

In 2016, Girls Who Code partnered with
Accenture Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentu ...
to work on the future of tech. They subsequently released a report on recommendations to decrease the gender gap in computing. Dell Technologies has partnered with the organization to support after school programs for young girls. On October 11, 2018, Girls Who Code partnered with
TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...
starting the hashtag #raiseyourhand. The app has announced to give US$1 for every video posted using the hashtag with a maximum of $10,000. As of 2020, Girls Who Code has partnered with
American Girl American Girl is an American line of dolls released on May 5, 1986, by Pleasant Company. The dolls portray eight- to fourteen-year-old boys and girls of a variety of ethnicities, faiths, and social classes from different time periods throughou ...
to create a doll who empowers girls to grow confidence and interest in technology. The doll, Courtney Moore, is an avid gamer who codes her own video game while dressed in 80's fashion. From September 2020 to December 2020, American Girl matched customer donations up to $50,000 to Girls Who Code. The organization also created four scholarships, each $5,000, for Girls Who Code members for furthering their computer science education. In December of 2021, Girls Who Code partnered with
Doja Cat Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini (born October 21, 1995), known professionally as Doja Cat ( ), is an American rapper and singer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, she began making and releasing music on SoundCloud as a teenager. Her song ...
and Active Theory to create DojaCode, an interactive music video to the star's single '
Woman A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardle ...
'. The interactive video introduced participants to three coding languages and allowed them to modify the appearance of the music video visuals using said languages. This was intended to get more teen girls interested in programming. Girls Who Code has had a partnership with weapons manufacturer Raytheon since 2018. The company, which is known for manufacturing weapons such as the
Tomahawk A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe used by the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America. It traditionally resembles a hatchet with a straight shaft. In pre-colonial times the head was made of stone, bone, or antler, and Euro ...
missile, has donated $1 million to the organization in 2021. Since August 2022, the pair worked together to launch Girls Who Code's Leadership Academy geared for college age girls. This 4 month program is open to over 100 college students. The purpose of the program is to expose students to the technology industry in order to grow their technical and professional skills. The curriculum of the program involves a mentorship program, professional events such as speed networking and interview preparation, as well as, a community-service based project.


Campaigns

Girls Who Code started a digital march called the #MarchforSisterhood. This campaign called for women and allies to post themselves marching for a cause they care about. Posts involve a video or picture of participants either holding a sign that says "I march for..." with the latter half filled in or stating who/what they march for. For Super Bowl 2020, Girls Who Code partnered with
Olay Olay, previously Oil of Olay, Oil of Olaz, Oil of Ulan or Oil of Ulay, is an American skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. For the 2009 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, Olay accounted for an estimated $2.8 billion of P&G's revenue. Ear ...
to make a Super Bowl commercial. The commercial featured
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,
Busy Philipps Elizabeth Jean "Busy" Philipps (born June 25, 1979) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles on the television series ''Freaks and Geeks'' (1999–2000), ''Dawson's Creek'' (2001–2003), ''Love, Inc.'' (2005–2006) and '' ER'' ...
,
Taraji P. Henson Taraji Penda Henson ( ; born September 11, 1970) is an American actress. She studied acting at Howard University and began her Hollywood career in guest roles on several television shows before making her breakthrough in '' Baby Boy'' (2001). Sh ...
, Katie Couric and, retired astronaut, Nicole Stott. The commercial was inspired by the first all-female spacewalk from October 2019. Olay donated $1 to Girls Who Code for each time #MakeSpaceForWomen was used on Twitter. In 2020, Girls Who Code released the campaign "Missing Code." The campaign involved a series of videos that depict applications such as Instagram and Netflix
glitching Glitching is an activity in which a person finds and exploits flaws or glitches in video games to achieve something that was not intended by the game designers. Players who engage in this practice are known as glitchers. Some glitches can be ea ...
out. These glitches were caused when code written by women were removed. The purpose of the campaign was to depict what the internet would look like if all the code written by women vanished and if women were not part of the technology industry.


International Expansion

In November 2018, Girls Who Code expanded to Canada. This was the organization's first international expansion. With the help of Morgan Stanley and the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries, Girls Who Code has launched at least 10 after-school clubs across Ontario. The expansion was announced at the Move the Dial Summit. As of August 2022, Girls Who Code has also expanded to India in order to increase the number of women engineers in India from 26%. The organization partnered with
United Technologies United Technologies Corporation (UTC) was an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut. It researched, developed, and manufactured products in numerous areas, including aircraft engines, aerospace system ...
to offer a virtual two week Summer Immersion Program, virtual six week self paced program and after school clubs. Girls Who Code has also expanded to the United Kingdom.


Controversy

In 2020-2021, four titles from the Girls Who Code books series, ''The Friendship Code'', ''Team BFF: Race to the Finish!'', ''Lights, Music, Code!'' and ''Spotlight on Coding Club!,'' were banned from the Central York school district in Pennsylvania. The books were listed on the PEN America's Index of School Book Bans for a 10-month period from November 2020 to September 2021. These books were also on a resource list created by the district's diversity committee which had other banned books such as '' The Handmaid's Tale''. Saujani stated that the banning was linked to the
Moms for Liberty Moms for Liberty is an American conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that claims to advocate for parental rights in schools. The organization has campaigned against COVID-19 restrictions in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates ...
group. The group has not confirmed this. The Moms for Liberty co-founder, Tina Descovich, said that the group is only concerned with banning material that would give their children easy access to sexually explicit content and pornography.


See also

*
Black Girls Code Black Girls CODE (BGC) is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on providing technology education for African-American girls. Kimberly Bryant, an electrical engineer who had worked in biotech for over 20 years, founded Black Girls Code in ...
* Native Girls Code * Women Who Code * I Look Like an Engineer


References


External links

*
Reshma Saujani's talk at TEDxGotham 2011 on Girls Who Code
( YouTube video)
Reshma's TED2016 Talk, "Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection"
{{Authority control Non-profit organizations based in the United States Computer science education Organizations established in 2012 Women in computing 2012 establishments in the United States