What women need to succeed in STEM?

The solution to the gender gap for women programmers boils down to two things: facing your fears and speaking up.

So says a recent report released by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). Solving the Equation: The Variables for Womens Success in Engineering and Computing reports that by 2022, the United States will need 1.7 million more engineers and computing professionals. Women who make up more than half the population are still significantly underrepresented in these fields. And womens intellect and voices need to be a part of the technologies and products created by these fields.

Giving women the power to speak their minds and tackle high tech jobs is gaining momentum thanks to several progressive Puget Sound companies and non-profit organizations. The result will hopefully be a more robust and diverse pipeline fueling 21st century tech jobs.

Heres just a few of the developments locally:

• Seattle based Code Fellows, a two-year-old coding school, has launched a $250,000 scholarship fund to foster technical workforce development among women, underrepresented minorities and veterans. Forty scholarships will be provided in the programs first year. Administered through the Washington Technology Industry Association and supported by several leading tech employers, the scholarships will cover 50 to 70 percent of Code Fellows tuition costs and will be awarded for Boot camp and Development Accelerator courses. This diversity scholarship program builds on one of our core beliefs: everyone should have the opportunity to develop, said Kristin Smith, CEO of Code Fellows.
• The Code Fellows Diversity Scholarship Fund aligns with the White Houses recently announced TechHire Initiative, which has dedicated $100 million to train Americans to fill the half-million currently open IT-related jobs, and match them with employers that have urgent needs in fields such as cyber security and software development.
• Ada Academy, the Seattle-based tuition-free coding school for women, recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to create a fund that will help support students daily living expenses while they are enrolled at the school.
• The Academy, which spun out of Seattle-based Technology Alliance earlier this year, also named former Microsoft veteran Cynthia Tee as its new executive director. The school offers a year-long software development program that includes six months of intense classroom instruction followed by six months at an internship.
• Washington FIRST Robotics, a non-profit dedicated to inspiring students to be science and technology leaders in the next generation, has set a goal to have every student in Washington State have access to its programs and teams by 2020. The organization has nearly 10,000 students across the state comprising 819 teams that are engaging in the sport of science, technology and team-work. The groups has more than 2,500 adult mentors who share their time and expertise with the teams and more than 1,200 volunteers who work to support the robotics competitions.
  

  The Washington Technology Industry Alliance is lighting the fire to inspire women and minorities to explore careers in technology with its new Speakers Bureau, a program matching passionate tech leaders with organizations dedicated to increasing diversity of Washingtons tech talent. In her Fire Starters Manifesto, Sarah Bird, a member of WTIAs diversity action committee, wrote: We want to create relationships between tech leaders and those struggling to enter and stay motivated.