Balanced gender ratio at student-organized event will encourage female participation in coding.
[dropcap1]M[/dropcap1]VHS students don’t need help coding. I mean, come on — three out of the 19 AP Computer Science exam perfect scorers are students here. We have students who waltz into hackathons to compete against professionals and win thousands of dollars in the process. Computer science isn’t a problem area for us.
Oh, wait a second. They’re all guys: Sophomores Ajay Jain and Jimmy Liu, seniors Douglas Chen, Ashutosh Jindal, Michael Mattheakis, Zuhayeer Musa and Prajit Ramachandran. Girls are underrepresented inside the classroom as well: Last year, only one fifth of AP Computer Science students were female.
This skewed gender ratio is what makes High School Hacks, the for-the-students-by-the-students hackathon founded by senior Shrav Mehta and co-organized by senior Hana Hyder and other local high schoolers, especially exciting. Over half of the student advocates are female, a far cry from the 15-to-one ratio found at some hackathons. Even though High School Hacks is focused on helping all high school students gain experience and connections, it will be especially beneficial for female coders, who are often discouraged by the male-centric culture of traditional hackathons.
[quote_right]High school girls at professional hackathons face not only a divide in age and experience but also a divide in gender.[/quote_right]“For women interested in tech, every time they look around the room, it’s always mostly men,” said Kara Silverman, one of the organizers of the 2012 Hack’n Jill hackathon that allowed only 50 men and 50 women to participate, in an interview with Next Web. “Intentionally or not, this sends a certain message that has a negative impact on women entering or staying in the field.”
It’s no doubt intimidating for high school boys to attend professional hackathons and face off against grown men. High school girls, however, face not only a divide in age and experience but also a divide in gender.
In a post on Femgineer, a website focused on helping women in tech progress their careers, engineer and website founder Poornima Vijayashanker points out the benefits of hosting hackathons solely for women. When women attend typical hackathons, they often “feel like they’re again in middle school, and the leaders of the teams have already picked their favorite players, leaving those still standing to question their self-worth or why they bothered to even show up.”
Some girls may be brave enough to take that risk, but I know that I’m not.
High School Hacks provides a low-risk environment for girls to get their feet wet. If I decide I want to attend, I don’t have to worry about being the only woman there; I don’t have to worry about being excluded or ignored. I don’t even have to worry about my lack of experience — the hackathon organizers will provide workshops by industry professionals. For 24 hours on the March 8, we can pretend that the technology industry is gender balanced. Events such as this one, however, move us a little closer to the day when we can stop pretending.
