Everyone's talking about the gender gap in the tech industry. There's been a large push for increasing funding for women to learn tech. Although this is a move in the right direction, it doesn't cover the challenges that moms learning tech are facing.
Many moms are either coming back into the tech field after spending time to raise children or are learning for the first time in order to provide for their children.
Some of the challenges moms face are:
- Time
- Costs
- Imposter Syndrome
- Reintegration into the workforce
- Breaking into a new field
- Resume gaps
Below you'll find a list of resources to help moms at all stages of their tech learning journey.
- Support Organizations
- Financial Assistance
- Free Coding Resources
- Childcare
- Tech Scholarships
- Conferences
- Employment Resources
- Mom-friendly Companies
- Techtonica A nonprofit that provides free tech training with living and childcare stipends and job placement. (Only in the San Francisco Bay Area as of 6/18/2018.)
- Simplon.co French patners program for reduce the gender gap #CodeHasNoGender
- Code First GirlsCode First: Girls works with companies and with men and women directly, to help increase the number of women in tech (UK)
- Tech Ladies Tech Ladies: resources, community, and a job board updated weekly that requires sign-up to see. Many remote positions and in the job postings indicates work-life balance and mom-friendly perks.
- Ladies Get Paid Ladies Get Paid: An organization working hard for equal pay, with an incredible community that you can find on their slack channel and panel events. They will help you know your worth and learn how to negotiate for it.
- NothingLess A microsite made by Ladies get Paid and Hired to educate the public on the pay gap. It's a great place to look for stories that will inspire.
- Hired A job site that is dedicated to helping women succeed in careers.
- Anitab.org recognizes the accomplishments of women in computing, and the organizations that recognize their value, through a variety of awards.
- Techtonica A nonprofit that provides free tech training with living and childcare stipends and job placement. (Only in the San Francisco Bay Area as of 6/18/2018.)
- Free Code Camp An organization that has thousands of coding lessons to help you improve your skills for free.
- Techtonica A nonprofit that provides free tech training with living and childcare stipends and job placement. (Only in the San Francisco Bay Area as of 6/18/2018.)
- Flatiron School: Women Take Tech This initiative will extend over $100,000 in scholarship funding – cutting tuition for women in half to $750/month for the online program (maximum tuition is 12 months or $9,000).
- Techtonica A nonprofit that provides free tech training with living and childcare stipends and job placement. (Only in the San Francisco Bay Area as of 6/18/2018.)
- Grace Hopper Celebration scholarship AnitaB.org finds sponsors to award hundreds of student and faculty scholarships to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration. This once in a lifetime chance, allows academics to connect with other women in computing, hear stories from peers and experts in computing, and get quality career advice specific to their needs needs.
- Dataquest.io Diversity Scholarship A scholarship for summer 2019 that will help women and minorities get started in studying Data Science.
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Grace Hopper Celebration AnitaB.org provides child care services for children ages 0-13 at no charge to conference attendees.You must register your children with Corporate Kids Events, our child care provider.
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KubeCon + CloudNativeCon provides complimentary 8am-5pm childcare at both EU and US locations. Registration required (see the "attend" page on the event for details).
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All HasGeek Conferences have professionally run childcare facilities at the conference, free of charge. Event registration and confirmation required.
- Fairy God Boss Fairygodboss helps women get hard-to-ask questions answered. They help you get the inside scoop on pay, corporate culture, benefits and work flexibility. They offer company ratings, job listings, discussion boards and career advice.
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Holly Brockwell : Holly Brockwell founded technology news site Gadgette in May. It’s a gadget and technology news site that’s focused on women, an audience that many tech sites struggle to write for.
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Avid Larizadeh Duggan : Along with Tom Hulme, Larizadeh Duggan is one of Google Ventures’ two remaining partners in Europe. She’s also the only female general partner at the fund. Larizadeh Duggan led Google Ventures’ investment into Yieldify, a two-year-old e-commerce startup that helps online retailers convince people to buy products online.
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Claire Valoti : Claire Valoti was recently poached from her role as joint head of agency relations at Facebook to head up Snapchat’s European operation from London. She works as Snapchat’s general manager of UK sales, overseeing the company’s first office outside the US. The company has made a series of hires for its European team from rival digital media and tech businesses over the past year.
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Julie Larson-Green : Last summer, Microsoft announced that they were promoting previous Windows Chief and 20-year Microsoft veteran Julie Larson-Green to oversee the entire company's hardware engineering.
This meant that Larson-Green was responsible for overseeing all devices, games, music, video and other entertainment as well as the 'Operating Systems Engineering Group' which includes the Xbox OS.
Despite a predictably sexist backlash to her appointment, Larson-Green brought a wealth of experience from her time overseeing the developers of Windows 7 and 8 to bear in the hardware division. Insider sources report that at one point, she had between 1,200 and 1,400 program managers, researchers, content managers and other members of the Windows team reporting to her.
- Juliana Rotich : The executive director of Ushahidi, a not-for-profit company that develops free open-source software, Juliana Rotich has pioneered new web tools for crowdsourcing crisis information. Originally from Kenya, she studied IT at university and became a well known blogger. Her software firm first came to prominence during the Kenyan presidential election crisis in 2007, using web, mobile and geolocation data to provide report updates.