Polish Organizations that Support Women in Tech
Everything you should know about Polish initiatives for women in tech. Check out available mentoring programs, courses, communities, and join the movement!
Statistics about females programmers in software development in Poland
Various data put Poland in a very good light. Poland was ranked by HackerRank on the list of countries with the largest proportion of female developers:
Source: HackerRank
With the higher number of Polish female developers comes high quality. HackerRank also presents women’s average scores on algorithms challenges. Polish female developers took third place!
Source: Medium.com
Still, there is so much to be done for women in tech
We discussed the situation of women in tech in an interview with our bright Senior Project Manager Kasia who is an academic teacher at the Department of Software Engineering at the Gdańsk University of Technology. Check out Kasia’s thoughts on the situation of Polish female STEM students.
Even if Poland looks quite well in the HackerRank above, there is much to be done for women in software development in Poland.
Fortunately, the Polish tech world knows that and organizes mentoring programs, courses, competitions, and more initiatives whose goal is to encourage women to pursue careers in engineering, especially in software development.
Polish initiatives that bring girls and women closer to tech
We gathered some of the Polish initiatives for women in tech and female programmers to-be.
Mentoring options for female software developers
Polish mentoring program that helps to find women’s first job in software development. It is a 3-months program. So far over 100 mentees got a chance to participate. The program is not free of charge however, there is an option to apply for a scholarship.
Mentoring program organized by Polish NGO — Perspektywy Education Foundation. Over 60 mentors offer their support to mentees across Poland. It is free of charge.
It is a 4-month, free mentoring program for women whose desire is to pursue a career in IT and new technologies. In 2022 the 7th edition of the mentoring program started. Tech Leaders mentors represent areas like IT development, Agile, Design, or HR. We are proud that our Senior Project Manager Kasia is among the group of mentors. She shares with her mentee her knowledge about Agile, Project Management, and team building.
IT educational program for women
Another free program that offers over 140 hours of workshops and courses regarding web development, online security, or 3D modeling. The program is dedicated to women aged from 18 to 40 who are unemployed or in difficult life situations. Thanks to iTech Woman! they can get knowledge about tech and take the first step toward their first job in tech.
Women Tech Communities
Global female tech community that came to life in Poland over 10 years ago. Since then Geek Girls Carrots have been organizing meetups, workshops, and mentoring for women in tech. They became a global movement, hosting meetings around the world.
Initiatives for teenagers and girls
That is a national Polish campaign started over 10 years ago. It might be the most recognized tech initiative for women in Poland. It is organized by the Perspektywy Education Foundation and the Conference of Rectors of Polish Technical Universities (KRPUT).
As you can see on their Girls as Engineers! Campaign website the main goal of the campaign is:
[…] to introduce technical and engineering studies to female high school students and to promote this educational path as interesting, attractive and very beneficial in the long run. Over 150 000 girls have participated in the project.
Is a free educational program including mentoring sessions. It is organized by the Polish NGO Girls code fun. STEAM Academy is dedicated to female students from Warsaw high schools. Participants attend 60 hours of classes regarding STEM areas and soft skills. After that, they have 1:1 sessions with mentors enabling them to dive into the most interesting aspects of the new technology world. During the whole program, high school female students have a chance to learn about frontend and backend development, UX design, and soft skills. Kasia and I got a great opportunity to be mentors to participants.
Space for Girls Magazine (Polish — “Magazyn Kosmos dla Dziewczynek”)
We all are aware that presenting tech opportunities to girls when they are already teenagers might be too late. That is why we included a special initiative addressed to young Polish girls.
“Space for Girl” is a Polish magazine dedicated to young girls. Its goal is to support girls in pursuing their passions for science and new technologies and showing them that no stereotypes have power over them. The magazine is published by the “Space for girls” Foundation. It is an NGO initiative created by women for women-to-be.
As you can see Polish NGOs are really fighting the stereotype that the tech world is a men’s world. Thank you for that! 👏
Have we missed some initiatives worth spreading? Let us know in the comment to get the chance to add them.
By Izabela Pawlik, Digital Marketing Specialist @ Bright Inventions
Originally published at https://brightinventions.pl on April 7, 2022.
