Women are massively underrepresented in the tech space. The Girl Scouts of America found that approximately 35% of STEM interest in adolescence comes from girls, but their interest wanes as they grow older. Only 18% of students pursuing tech degrees are women.
Why does this number drastically decrease? Could it be peer pressure? Or lack of encouragement? Regardless, keeping young women engaged and believing that a career in science, technology, engineering or math-related fields is possible is a challenge. That’s why cleverbridge created a female-focused, newbie-friendly hackathon in coordination with Jellyvision, 8th Light and Girl Develop It. The event, She Hacks Chi, was held over this past weekend, and is the first hackathon dedicated to building applications that directly benefit STEM interest in young women. Participants had thirteen hours to work with their team to develop their idea, code their prototype and put together a compelling product pitch and were judged based on innovation, most likely to succeed, the benefit to the community and on their pitch delivery.
As Amanda Lannert, CEO of Jellyvision put it, “Hackathons force participants to whittle their big ideas down to a more manageable, MVP. And it’s these more manageable projects that go on to being developed and solving real challenges faced by girls every day.”
Encouraged by tech mentors Roni Tehori, Helen Levinson, Jamie Fiedler and Charlie Ferreira, fifty participants from the ages of 18-45 formed small teams and were challenged to build something that solved a real problem. One team created a Stackoverflow-like site that allows teachers to answer their students’ questions in a safe and supportive environment. Another team created a platform that teaches girls how to code using the game Mad Libs. Team CreateHER devised an engineering design challenge that centers around a thematic story line and encourages girls to collaborate to iterate and improve their designs. One member of team CreateHER plans to use the prototype her team coded in her sixth grade classroom.
“Beyond the learning experience, hackathons are about producing real, tangible applications,” said She Hacks Chi organizer and cleverbridge developer Steph Milovic. “Some of these projects will only live through that one weekend. Others may go on to become the start of businesses or launch careers. We hope we’ve given these women the platform to create something special that they’ll continue to iterate and optimize.”
cleverbridge also used this event as an internal recruiting tool for their Front-End Development team. Adler Planetarium and Jellyvision also shared open job positions with participants, as did tech start-ups Sentic and Occasion.
Caitlin Marco, one of the organizers of the event, hopes that this will turn into a regular hackathon series. “We think this is only the beginning of encouraging female developers in Chicago and there is plenty of opportunity to tackle other projects and problem areas. I’d love to invite non-profits to present their ideas and then encourage participants to work on those projects.”
Although there were awards in many categories the grand prize was the Dame Stephanie Shirley award, which went to Team CreateHER. Dame Shirley, an entrepreneur in the early 1960’s, founded a successful all-female software startup to get past the gender issues of that time. Like Dame Shirley, we also feel that the glass ceiling deserves to be shattered.
She Hacks Chi exposes young women to the vast number of opportunities that exist for women in tech. Through hosting this and similar events, cleverbridge hopes to encourage and maintain their interest in tech.
