I just turned 33, I’m a mum of two and I started learning to code 1 year ago. Next month I’m going to launch a webapp I build myself using Rails, JavaScript, SaSS and Foundation.

There is an opportunity tap in to all the women out there who have a motivation to learn to code — mine happened to be that I had a clear vision for something I could see needed to be created for mums like me. I realised I was totally ill-equipped to even be able to *commission* something being built. I had no hope of being able to communicate with developers. For example, I didn’t know that a domain name was different from hosting, or what the difference is between a web developer and a designer. How do you start when you don’t know where to start?

In the time it’s taken me to learn to code and build my site (part-time, patchy childcare), four established male entrepreneurs came up with a similar idea and are having phenomenal success. I simply wasn’t anywhere close to being able to build my idea when I thought of it nearly 2 years ago, though I could get 500 signups to a Facebook Page in the space of a weekend and people on to a shared Google sheet. Yes, I could have gone ahead with another Wordpress / SquareSpace page — but that had already been done by hundreds of women before me and what we were really waiting for was a true tech solution.

This issue of diversity really really matters — there are millions of women out there with amazing ideas and no means of execution. Learning to code not only gave me the tools to build, but an understanding which allowed me to imagine better features and solutions to a problem I’ve directly experienced. It takes a certain level of understanding to be able to work with designers and developers effectively, but if you get that and you’re a minority, then WOW — you have the opportunity to solve pain points that simply haven’t been experienced by today’s developer population at large.

The key things that kickstarted my journey were:

1. Motivation.
2. Being old enough to know I can do what the hell I want, not to care what anyone else thinks and f*ck the stereotypes.
3. A brief taster of coding via Mums in Technology — where I could bring my baby along and learn in a completely supportive environment without fear of looking / being stupid.
4. Savings to be able to pay for a course at Makers Academy
5. Crucially, a supportive husband who could take shared parental leave from work to care for our children whilst I studied full time for 3 months. My son was born April 2015 — just in time for the new policy changes in the UK.

Find the women who want to code, for any reason at all. Find ways to encourage the ones who don’t. Make it accessible, inclusive and fear-free. Make it affordable. (And give men more parental rights!)

In the long-run, our best shot is to give all our children the opportunity to be fluent in the language of tech.