Women in Tech Resource Guide — Eugene Oregon and Beyond

What do women need to succeed in tech careers? Access to resources, including other women in tech. Our team has assembled this list of available resources for women in tech, especially those aimed at improving access to traditionally underrepresented communities in tech fields.

Many included resources extend their reach beyond the Lane County area, however the #EugeneTech local scene is rich with resources for women at any point in their tech career. Let us know in the comments if we missed anything that you think should be included.

Eugene, Oregon from Skinner’s Butte. Source: Wikimedia

Meetups & Networking

Get your boots on the ground and go meet people. Exchange business cards. Follow-up on LinkedIn. Invite your favorites out for coffee. Repeat.

Redefining Women in Tech

• Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
• On Meetup.com via Eugene/Springfield Startups (see below)

Eugene/Springfield Startups — sponsored by RAIN Eugene

• Startup Coffee Meetup — Third Thursdays
• ID8 pre-accelerator
• FertiLab Thinkubator

Eugene Women in Tech — First Wednesday monthly meetup

EugeneTech (#EugeneTech)

• Social Media: Facebook, Twitter
• Tech Tuesday — weekly meetup and Facebook Live Show
• Slack — online discussion community; follow #womenintech and other channels of interest.

Eugene Maker Space

• Open Hack Night — Regular Meetup

Women in Computer Science (WiCS) — University of Oregon student group striving for diversity in Computer & Information Science.

Lane Women in Tech (Join by request) — Lane Community College — student club for Lane IT female students to network and continue to pursue gender diversification.

Eugene Web Devs — meetup for Eugene area web developers.

Bitforest — meetup for Eugene area game developers

Learn to Code

Local Resources

• CoderDojo Eugene Regional Hub — An exciting environment for youth to learn age-appropriate coding skills in Eugene, Oregon. Sessions are free and educate kids in coding, e-textiles, mini bots, and LEGO® Motors and Mechanisms.
• Fidgets2Widgets — Cutting edge technology learning program for ages 8–14, featuring Minecraft, 3D Printing, VR, coding and exer-gaming. Physical location in Eugene, Oregon, online version available everywhere!
• The Tech Academy — a licensed career school located in Portland, Oregon where students learn to code. The coding classes on the Software Development Boot Camp covers computer programming and web development. The curriculum is available online, so the course can be studied from anywhere in the world.
• Ada Developers Academy — a training program located in Seattle, Washington for women and gender diverse people who want to become software developers. Ada is tuition-free and is comprised of 6 months of full-time classroom training followed by 5 months in a paid industry internship
• Code Oregon Resource Guide — list of recommended online learning resources & Portland networking/meetup groups by Code Oregon.

Online Resources

• Code.org — Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. Some of the curriculum is developed here in Eugene by Kiki Prottsman.
• The Tech Academy — see local resources section for more details.
• General Assembly — Sort through a variety of General Assembly online courses — full-time or part-time, short or long-form coding, data, design, digital marketing, product management.
• Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization on a 3 month programming project during their break from school. Student applications are in March and early April.
• HackYourFuture Curriculum — github repository containing the curriculum that is being used by HackYourFuture to train refugees to code.
• Outreachy — Remote work internships and mentorships for women and minorities in the Free and Open Source Software community. Outreachy was inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code and by how few women and minorities applied for it in the past.

Local Business Resources

RAIN Eugene — Eugene business accelerator program. Networking events and resources for startups and innovators in Lane County.

Technology Association of Oregon — parent organization of TAO SWV; promoting technology throughout Oregon.

• TAO Southern Willamette Valley — a non-profit organization promoting technology throughout the Southern Willamette Valley.

Mentorship

Million Women Mentors aims to change the face of women and girls, their career choices and advancement. They have 39 states with pledges and committees; 60 corporations and 60 partners are engaged nationally; and the global pledges are increasing. Their site includes local Oregon opportunities.

Local Job Boards & Community Directories

Eugene Tech Switchboard — #EugeneTech local asks and offers for jobs, services, collaboration, space, events, projects.

Eugene Tech Jobs — a weekly blog summarizing activity in the Eugene tech job scene; curation across multiple sources.

EUGTech Relocation Guide, by Eugene, Cascades & Coast

Silicon Shire — Eugene/Springfield tech company directory- filter by category.

Grants & Scholarships

For female high school students just thinking about their career paths in tech, there are also a lot of options.

Each year the Women Techmakers Scholars Program (formerly Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship) gives financial support to selected women studying computing and technology at undergraduate and graduate level. Borg worked to educate people, especially women, in the importance of technology and founded the Institute for Women and Technology in 1997, now called the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She also co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, which is the world’s largest annual gathering of female technologists, and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

The Society of Women Engineers offers a huge range of scholarships both for computer engineering majors and general engineering, in association with companies like Dell, Cisco, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments and Verizon. Other scholarships and grants for women to study technology-related subjects are offered by Palantir, Microsoft, ESA, National Center for Women and Information Technology.

Additionally, individual universities also often offer specific scholarships for women studying IT or computer science.

Career Transition Grants

• AAUW Career Development Grants help create opportunities for women changing careers and moving into non-traditional fields.

Startup & Innovation Grants

• New Voices Fund is a $100 Million Fund created to empower women of color entrepreneurs to reach their full potential. This groundbreaking initiative, designed to level the playing field, provides women of color entrepreneurs with unprecedented access, capital, and expertise they need to excel.

National Organizations & Blogs

• Anita Borg Institute: This inspiring organization works to increase the impact of women on all aspects of technology, and increase the positive impact of technology on the world’s women.
• Black Girls Code: Provides young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming.
• BlogHer: In 2005 Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins, and Lisa Stone responded to the often repeated question: “where all the women bloghers?” Blogher was their answer, the largest online community of women bloghers to date.
• ChickTech: A national organization started in Portland, Oregon serving women and girls in technology. Find a chapter.
• Code Like a Girl: Medium publication featuring pro-women-in-STEM topics. Based in Ontario, but writers are international.
• Code Like a Girl: Australia-based Code Like a Girl is an initiative dedicated to providing girls with the tools, knowledge and support to enter and flourish in the world of coding.
• Feminist Approach to Technology: A not-for-profit organization based in New Delhi working towards empowering women through technology.
• Girl Develop It: Girl Develop It is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning web and software development. Through in-person classes and community support, Girl Develop It helps women of diverse backgrounds achieve their technology goals and build confidence in their careers and their every day lives.
  * Portland, Oregon Chapter
• Girls Who Code: A national nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering sectors.
• Linuxchix: Great network of women working in Linux.
• National Women of Color Technology Conference: The conference recognizes the significant accomplishments of minority women in the digital world, and attracts and leverages talent in innovative, professional, and technical positions.
• NCWIT: The National Center for Women & Information Technology is a coalition of over 200 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits working to increase women’s participation in information technology (IT).
• NTEN: A member driven organization that aspires to a world where all nonprofit organizations skillfully and confidently use technology to meet community needs and fulfill their missions. It’s lead by Women Who Tech advisory committee member Holly Ross.
• The Kauffman Foundation: Provides grant making on two areas — educational achievement and entrepreneurial success. They have great studies on the positive impact women CEO’s have on companies.
• SHE++ — California-based group empowering underrepresented groups in technology.
• Systers: One of the world’s largest email communities of technical women in computing.
• WebChick.net: Angela Byron’s blog about working in open source.
• Women 2.0: A SF bay area organization that aims to increase the number of young women entrepreneurs by encouraging women to work with and in the field of technology.
• Women Techmakers Communities — career support for women in tech.
• Young Women in Digital: Young Women in Digital is a networking group of women working in digital marketing, social media, public relations, and more. See why 1,000+ women call YWD home.

Additional Reading

• Women in IT: The Facts, PDF eBook By NCWIT
• The Complete Ecosystem Supporting Women-Led Tech Companies
• Latina Entrepreneurs: Growing And Powerful, By Women2.0
• Women in Technology: Hear Us Roar Series, By Tatiana Apandi
• Women Who Risk: Making Women in Technology Visible, By Tara Hunt
• National Assessments on Gender and Science,Technology and Innovation, By Wisat.org
• Redefining Women in Tech on Pinterest — many more articles and resources

Women in Tech Research & Statistics

• When women stopped coding (NPR 2014)
• We could not find detailed enough data on gender by industry code to get the percentage of females in the tech sector in Lane County. He was able to get gender by occupation from Census though. For computer occupations the percent male is as follows: US — 75%, Oregon — 79% and Lane County — 76%. So, the percentage of females is pretty consistent around 20% to 25%. He looked at the broader computer, engineering, and science occupations and the percentages of males were similar at US — 75%, Oregon — 79% and Lane County — 76%.
• We looked up the Portland City Club event and sent an email asking where they got 67% male in the Portland tech sector. The Census occupational data has Portland MSA at about 78% for both occupational categories listed above. The description of the PCC event is found here.

This resource guide was compiled by Lauren Jerome with the assistance of the EugeneTech community.

To request edits, please leave comments below with suggestions.