Women’s History Month is here. To celebrate all month long, we’ll be highlighting some of the different orgs and people making waves for women’s representation. 

Next up, Dr. Tarika Barrett, CEO of Girls Who Code. Since 2012, the nonprofit has provided over 500,000 girls, young women, and nonbinary students with opportunities to explore coding and build professional skills — all in an effort to close the gender gap in the tech industry. Because, while women make up about 47% of the US workforce, they hold just over a quarter of positions in the STEM field. Conditions are even worse for women of color. Here’s what she had to say…

Q: Why are we still seeing a gender gap in the tech industry?

At Girls Who Code, we always say that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see.’ Our girls grow up seeing all of these men in tech — Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Neil Armstrong, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. But they don’t see women pioneers who’ve been incredible in the field like Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, or Jean Bartick. We’re still dealing with this archetype of a coder or a tech person as a boy in a hoodie alone in the basement or a man in Silicon Valley running a company. Before girls are even 10 years old, they’ve internalized these cultural touchstones about what a computer scientist looks like and does. And these internalized beliefs resonate with them their entire lives.

Q: How has the gender gap changed over time?

In 1995, women made up almost 40% of computing jobs … and today, women make up less than 26%. So unfortunately, this is not one of those cases of slow and steady progress or the long mark of justice ... [We] recently found that 50% of women end up leaving the tech industry by the age of 35 because they found their workplaces to be inhospitable … We have to keep a laser-like focus on expanding and extending this pipeline of women who are learning computer science. But we also have to hold the sector and these companies accountable and make sure that they are actually tapping into this incredible body of talent that we have.

Q: Why do we need more women involved in tech?

Tech intersects our lives at every possible touchstone — be it safety and security, voting rights, healthcare — and we’re far past the point where we can opt out ... But right now, tech does not reflect the diversity of our communities. Having more female and nonbinary voices, young people of color, will only make our tech better and more reflective of our interests and needs.

PS: Girls Who Code is hosting a CodeFair later this month. To learn more, click here.