Why I am supporting Django Girls Lagos, and you should too.

The Nigerian tech community is male dominated. Period.

Hanging around the community offline or online, I have observed the relative lack of participation of women. In most tech gatherings, we probably have 1 woman for every 10 male participant (if not worse). Looking at the number of aspiring tech startup founders, the numbers drop further.

I am aware this is a global problem and the discussions on tech gender diversity is starting to take the centre stage. A quick check on the Internet says part of the story. I haven’t seen a lot of effort directed at nipping this problem in the bud in this part of the globe though.

This problem is very easy to miss, you won’t even find it if you’re not looking or paying attention. You might not even consider it a problem.

Big Picture

We will be missing the full potential of technology if we limited its use to solving some problems and not others. The big picture is in understanding that technology is reshaping work and productivity across the board. Technology is changing not just male dominated fields like Engineering, but also all the fields typically stereotyped with women. And therein lies the opportunity.

As an example, if more women in Nigeria were studying Nursing, wouldn’t this be the best time to raise the next generation of Nurses that would use technology to automate repetitive tasks while having time to actually care for patients? In a country with massive infrastructure deficits, every gain in efficiency is a plus to productivity. Wouldn’t machine learning and Big Data be useful to women in primary health centres for predicting still births among pregnant women and getting the necessary help early?

Women hold the family together. They sometimes leave their high paying jobs to become stay at home mums. Wouldn’t it be great if we had more of these women who could code and as such be able to commit code even from the comfort of their homes? Think of other typical roles associated with women and how much technology could enhance their productivity.

I believe we are missing the productivity and economic gains women could bring to the table when empowered with technology. (You can read more here on the economic benefits of empowering women)

We need to start giving women the opportunity to show us how differently they would solve problems, especially with technology. And that is why I am supporting Django Girls Lagos.

Django Girls

Django girls is a global initiative to ‘inspire women to fall in love with programming’. Django girls is not for profit, and through programming workshops, it assists women with tools, training and mentoring needed to get started with programming Python and building applications with the Django Web framework. Pockets of Django girls community are springing up around the world. I am aware we already have a few Django girls communities in Nigeria.

We have identified and complained about not having enough developers. Most times the focus largely is on boys. Django girls presents an opportunity for us to show our commitment to gender neutrality in our ecosystem by also carrying the girls along. We need female developers as much as we need the male ones. Django girls help by getting girls started on programming and connecting them with mentors.

If you’d like to be a coach, a mentor or a partner, please checkout the Next Django Girls event here.