Node Girls Workshops In Tel Aviv
Introduction
Node Girls is an international initiative established in London in 2015 with the goal of trying to reduce the gap between women and men in the software world. The idea is to allow women a “glimpse” into the programming world, through a free workshop in which they experiment by building a web application.
The gender gap in the High-Tech industry is clear, there aren’t a lot of women. I’m used to being the woman in the room. That is why I’ve started the Node Girls workshops in Tel Aviv, and this is an initiative close to my heart.
Node Girls in Tel Aviv
In 2018 I discovered Node Girls workshops, and I was so excited about that. I reached the girls in London and asked them to run this in Tel Aviv. I thought it’s a great opportunity to attract more girls into this world in Israel.
There were two successful workshops in Tel Aviv so far, lots of girls came and learned, enjoyed and challenged themselves. Some of them even continued learning it afterwards. We’ll keep going towards more workshops in the future in order to make this world more accessible.
The overall goal of the program is to expose as many women as possible to the programming world. We create a feminine and supportive environment to women who want to know if programming is the right choice for them. They can ask as many questions as they want and they are being answered without being judged.
This workshop create a sense of capability for the participants, that this is not a “men’s world”. They can also do it, although they might have heard differently.
How It Goes?
The workshop lasts only one day (Friday), during which the participants sit in small groups of 3 women with an instructor, and together they are doing a tutorial and building their application step by step. All the instructors are programmers who volunteered for it, and it is so important and not taken for granted.
At the beginning, after we kicked off with a light breakfast, I give a brief intro of what programming is, and how it looks from the user’s point of view and from the programmer’s point of view. Also I explain what we are going to do in the workshop and then let them start learning in full power.
All the instructors take their participants through the same tutorial. There are two levels of tutorials — beginners and advanced. They are being split up into groups according to their knowledge level and according to their laptop’s operating system (Mac or Windows), so it will be easier to the instructors. The tutorials are in Hebrew and in English, so the participants can choose which language they prefer.
The tutorials are well structured and slowly explain the core concepts of programming, so the participants can get into it more smoothly. Being in a small group with a female instructor creates a very positive and comfortable environment so they can ask as many questions as they need, without feeling judged.
After lunch, we have several lightning talks from women in this world — designers, product managers, QA’s and engineers, who explain about their careers. The participants can hear how is it like to be a woman in the High-Tech world, and how to get there. How a day in a life of a woman programmer looks like, and which challenges they ran into in their daily life.
We continue the tutorials after the lighting talks and getting into complicated things, like publishing their app online or using databases. We encourage the girls to open their minds and see how wonderful programming can be.
At 3 PM we’d reached the end of a wonderful, inspiring day, filled with new things learned. We wrap-up with some thank you words — to our instructors, who gave up on their free day and came to help us. To the sponsors, who enabled this day to become a reality and of course to the participants who challenged themselves and came to this workshop.
We also give some advice to the girls about how to keep on from this point and what they can do to move forward with their dream to become a programmer.
Why It’s Available Only For Women?
Even today, in the 21st century, there is still a glass ceiling for girls who want to get into the programming world, you can read more about it here.
As I said before, the female environment in the workshop is comfortable and the girls can ask any questions they want, They won’t get answers like “You are a woman, you won’t get it anyway”. This workshop is a place you don’t feel like you need to protect your right to try.
The workshop actually helped, you can see here a response from one of the participates in the workshop:
I did not expect to be able to learn so much in 1 day. Everything was very clear and the help from our volunteer was amazing.
Conclusion
Those events are my way to try to create a more equal world, in which there will be 50% of women inside each room, that we would believe that we can do everything and our society will let us do everything.
I hope this article has motivated you to work for a more equal world, thank you for reading! Until next time 😃
