Lady Geeks Unite: Putting the Her in Hero

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to not only celebrate Ada, the very first computer programmer, but a day celebrate the technology industry, an industry that features a balanced ratio of male and female creators of technology as well as consumers of it, women are celebrated as tech pioneers just as much as their male counterparts, and females sit beside men at the forefront of technological advances in the UK.

Well not yet, rewind to 2013 and what Jamie Oliver did forschool dinners is now on the uprising in the form of a brilliant but fierce campaigning agency called Lady Geek and its mission to inspire girls to change the world through technology. Lady Geek is the creation of Belinda Parmar an author, professor and campaigner who's mission is to enable women to live in a world where anything is possible and no career, including one in tech, is off limits.

It's astounding that just 17% of the tech workforce in the UK is female, 22% in US and it is declining each year by 0.5%, meaning that in 30 years only 1% of tech creators will be female.

Lady Geek’s campaign Little Miss Geek aims to communicate with teachers, schools and parents to break the tech taboo and inspire young girls to embrace it and not write it off as a subject they wouldn’t be suited to, and it’s working. 

Having spent two years working in inner city schools, trialing a series of programmes supporting girls through primary, secondary and university education and creating tech clubs and one-off events designed to inspire, Little Miss Geek has increased the number of girls taking GCSE Computing by 52%.

Today marks the first Her in Hero Day, celebrating not only Ada Lovelace but all female tech pioneers such as Mary Anderson, the inventor of windshield wipers, and thanks to Little Miss Geek and all involved who have pledged their support, schools across the county will be hosting a Her in Hero assembly bringing together females working in the tech industry to take part in encouraging young children that they can have build a career in technology if they want to.

If you would like to find out more about Lady Geek visit www.ladygeek.com and head to www.littlemissgeek.com to find out all about the campaign. 

Help celebrate tech superwomen everywhere today with Lady Geek on Facebook and join us in supporting the campaign on Twitter too by using the hashtag #HerInHero

Happy Ada Lovelace day!

Katie x