Opening the Doors to Tech: International Day of the Girl

To celebrate International Day of the Girl, we invited the Entrepreneur First community to commit to supporting gender diversity in tech. The EF team, cohort and alumni made a number of pledges to give more girls and women the opportunity to get involved in the tech industry.

However big or small, these acts will help to open more doors for women and girls to get into tech. We still have a long way to go before tech is a truly diverse industry, but these pledges are a great place to start. From teaching rails classes, to providing work experience, to creating content around women in tech, take a look at some of the pledges below.

The Pledges

I pledge to help women/girls learn how to code. By spending one night a week at a bootcamp dedicated to getting women into tech, I hope I can make the career switch easier for those that are interested – Matt G, EF Team

Novoic pledges to encourage girls and reduce bias in our recruitment process, including: using language for job adverts that doesn’t disencourage girls from applying, tracking and analyzing gender metrics through our recruitment funnel, and using standardized questions and scoring metrics for initial interview to reduce any cognitive bias – Emil, CEO – Novoic

I pledge to spend an afternoon sharing data science and programming expertise with a female student in Singapore, listening to their career goals and preparing a selection of take-home technical resources to help get a head-start in the industry – Caleb, CTO – Nucon

I pledge to highlight the amazing young role models who have been through Code First: Girls and made the leap into technical careers. The more we can show girls that you can start getting involved in coding and technology at any stage of your education or career, the more we can create a step change in gender diversity in tech. – Alice, EF Team

I pledge to speak to a group of school girls about careers in tech – Kitty, EF Team

I pledge to organise an event for women, girls and non-binary people who want to make an impact with their careers through tech – Georgie, EF Team

I pledge that in every conversation with any girl that somehow deals with school or career preferences I will use all the enthusiasm I have to outline why science and engineering is just the coolest expertise in the world and the only one that really brings forward our world – and happily use alcemy as an example of how science and engineering will make the world a better place. 

I also pledge that whenever I notice typical prejudices towards a girl (e.g. math is nothing for girls – very common in the area I grew up) I will try my very best to change the behavior of the person who has the prejudice and to convince the girl that this prejudice is total bullshit – Leo, CEO – Alcemy

I pledge to mentor every girl I know who wishes to pursue STEM – Avlokita, CTO – Aarogya AI

We pledge to hire a girl for an intern/full time position within the next 6 months, as an equal opportunity employer – Hafiz, CEO – AtomBrush

I pledge to do everything within my power to increase the gender diversity within our company and the tech sector in general.

This includes speaking at gender diversity events; not speaking at events where the speakers are predominantly male; including the need for gender diversity explicitly in our hiring policy, plugging gender diversity appropriately in social media, but without being annoying; creating a progressive maternity and paternity policy; supporting flexible working for people with children, creating a work environment that is obviously diverse, but not pointed out; exploring the Law Society’s pledge for gender diversity and other common standards; not rewarding one gender disproportionately to another, so girls don’t feel like they are promoted just because of their gender (but because of the quality of their work), and other ideas that improve gender diversity and equality where we can, in an incremental fashion appropriate for our stage of company – Rafie, CEO – Genie AI

I pledge to teach a rails girls class – Sai, CEO – SensorFlow

At Reallm, we will host work experience in school half term for a girl interested in finding out more about start-ups (signed up through Workfinder – ada2019.workfinder.com/get-in-touch) – Lottie, CEO – Reallm

I pledge to join “I’m a scientist, get me out of here” and answer questions for young aspiring scientists. – Hira, CEO – Lumi Space

I pledge to go out of my way to find and offer mentorship in entrepreneurship to one girl – Patrick, EF Team

I pledge to create a content piece (video/written) promoting women in tech – Jonny E, EF Team

I pledge to give a talk and mentor someone – Neel, CEO – Donut

I pledge to take on a work experience student, talk about opportunities to any girl interested, and provide general support to girls that are passionate about STEM fields – Diana, CEO – Neurobotx

I pledge to partner with our amazing EF women to highlight their career stories and successes, which we can then share with prospective female talents to build first class (gender balanced) pipelines to hire from. I pledge to always have at least one female talent on every shortlist (especially Manager+) we hire here – Fiona, EF Team

I pledge to take on a work experience student – Jonny C, EF Team

I pledge to go back to my school at the next given opportunity to talk about the amazing possibilities of a career in tech – Olivia, EF Team

Long term: actively work against any subsconsious or societal pressures that dissuade women from entrepreneurship. If I ever found my own company, make sure my choices aren’t informed by a majority of my own gender. Next 6 months: work with my cousins Julia and Camila to expand education into the poorest neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires with two more centres. Reverse the primarily mail participant rate (of our ‘tutors’) by recruiting more girls and chipping away at the pervasive and sometimes dangerous machismo in Argentina one step at a time – Tomas, EF Team

I pledge to use my role to try and make girls feel that a career as a tech founder is both an aspirational choice, and also an entirely achievable one – Naph, EF Team