By Rory Steel
09/03/2020
We’re pleased to say that Emily Bridge, a student at Hautlieu School has been selected alongside a Guernsey student to take part in the Vodafone Hackathon event. The Code Like a Girl programme is aimed at overcoming the imbalances that exist in education and the workplace whereby women and girls are underrepresented in the field of science, technology, engineering and maths. There are only 60 places available nationally and during the 4 days between 6-9th April, girls will be taught a range of technical skills delivered by Vodafone volunteers, culminating in a competition to build their own website.
Peter Zunino, Head of Sales and Marketing at Airtel-Vodafone said: ‘We are delighted to sponsor this one in a lifetime opportunity for Emily to further her passion for coding at the highest level with our partners Vodafone, and look forward to working closely with Digital Jersey to help address the gender gap that exist in education and the workplace around STEM subjects.’
Rory Steel, Head of Digital Jersey Academy, said: “with many countries still hiring less than 20% of tech positions by women, Digital Jersey welcomes and supports Airtel Vodafone’s #CodeLikeAGirl campaign to help focus on the next generation of tech talent. With 74% of girls expressing a desire for a career in STEM fields (Source: TechCrunch), there is clearly a poor conversion rate to those that choose a digital career. Only 18% of Computer Science bachelors at major universities in 2016 were women (Source: Ncwit), proving that we need more opportunities like this one to improve the gender bias in technology”.
It seems that while girls may be enthusiastic to start a career in technology not many of them follow through with that dream. Some cite a lack of inspiring female role models in the industry. Some larger companies, like Apple, are focusing to redress the balance and according to Apple’s annual diversity report of 2018, 39% of Apple leaders under 30 were women (Source: Apple).
Emily is keen to join the digital sector, in her application, she said, “I am a really big tech enthusiast and have participated in every Youth Hackathon in Jersey. I’ve been a digital leader at School and attended the 5G Summit in Guernsey. I’m really passionate about IT and coding and in the future, I want to become a leading woman in tech”.
We wish Emily the best of luck at the Hackathon in April.
