{"id":4799,"date":"2017-03-21T18:05:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T18:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog-stg.cheesecakelabs.com\/blog\/girl-codes-matters\/"},"modified":"2022-07-01T17:42:51","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T17:42:51","slug":"girl-codes-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog-stg.cheesecakelabs.com\/br\/girl-codes-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"A girl who codes: Why that matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think of a professional who has changed the history of IT for a second. If the person who came to your mind was Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or any other male name, it’s no wonder. Although the history of computing is marked by contributions from great women, such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller and Hedy Lamarr, women are still seen as if they played a secondary role in this market.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The facts<\/b><\/h2>\n

According to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In<\/em> book “Of the 195 independent countries in the world, only 17 are led by women. Women hold just 20% of seats in parliaments globally. Women became 50% of the college graduates in the United States in the early 1980s”. And yet, according to <\/span>National Center for Women & Information Technology<\/span><\/a>‘s <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> (NCWIT) in 2015, women held 57% of all professional occupations, yet they only held 25% of all IT jobs. And the numbers are even lower when we consider women of color, like Latinas or Black women, decreasing to 1% and 3% of these jobs respectively.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it<\/b><\/h2>\n

We are in a user-centered design era. This should make people start paying more attention to gender questions, considering that everyone is a potential user and consumer. Yet, women are still largely absent on the IT industry, and this reality must change. This is not only a social matter anymore, it became a strategic business subject. According to <\/span>IMF studies<\/span><\/a>, significant macroeconomic gains happen when women are able to participate more fully in the labor market. Also, on <\/span>2015\u2019s World Economic Forum<\/span><\/a>, the president of IMF \u2013 Christine Lagarde \u2013 shared the idea that an organization needs to mirror its target customers. She said that 70% of the home products in US are bought by women, so the companies should have at least this proportion of women employees.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, how can we change this?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The first and most important step to increase diversity is to ensure that you are treating with equality all the people who already work in your company. This includes: <\/span><\/p>\n