Working on a gender problem
Enspiral Dev Academy is pleased to announce our latest cohort of students has the highest proportion of women ever. This month 19 students joined the Hihi cohort to learn the tools to become web developers. Of these students, 13 identify as women and 6 as men.
Sarah, a student on the latest cohort, notes “the lack of women in the tech industry was one of the major reasons I decided to come to EDA. I was on the verge of a career change, and the more I read about the lack of diversity in the field, the more I wanted to come help change that. So it was especially cool when I got to EDA and met so many other women in my cohort. Change is happening!”
Enspiral Dev Academy is an 18 week intensive, full immersion bootcamp where students learn by doing. They leave with all the fundamentals of software development needed to be employed as junior web developers.
Dev Academy puts an active emphasis on diversity and inclusion, offering scholarships to those underrepresented in the the tech sector and tailoring its space and curriculum to embrace a wide variety of needs.
This month two special $2000 scholarships have been awarded for an upcoming cohort, one for women and nonbinary gender identities, and one for Māori and Pasifika applicants.
Dev Academy also runs Te Uru Rangi, a scholarship programme in partnership with iwi, Te Puni Kōkiri and NZTE to help financially support Māori students on to the programme.
“We’re absolutely ecstatic to see these efforts towards inclusion reflected so strongly in our latest cohort,” Dev Academy co-founder Rohan Wakefield notes. “We aim to see a world where everyone feels excited to join the innovation industry.”
Wakefield notes that gender is only part of the diversity problem in tech, with many ethnicities and sexualities and people of diverse abilities still woefully underrepresented.
“But we’re pleased to be making headway in this important area.”
Dev Academy proposes that having more women on the programme will lead to more women entering the tech industry, which means that later, more women will be able to land on boards and gain positions as CEOs.
PledgeMe co-founder Anna Guenther points out in “Women in Tech: Why the industry needs to fix its gender problem,” that a myriad of factors including sexism and prejudice mean that New Zealand is still, in 2017, falling far short of the aspiration of gender balance in management and tech.
By providing fast, cost-effective education for career changers from all walks of life, Dev Academy hopes to contribute in some way towards fixing this problem.
If you’re interested in learning the tools to become a web developer in 18 weeks, check out our website to see why Dev Academy is right for you, and apply now for the next cohort.
