As part of the “Computer Science Education Week”, a programming competition will be held on December 12 under the slogan “Online. Female. Code. Hackathon. 2020. Namics”. The goal is to motivate women to do this job, because research shows that they currently make up only a fifth of programmers in the entire IT sector in Serbia.
The competition is organized by the Swiss digital agency “Namics – A Merkle Company”, and is intended for all women interested in software engineering, regardless of previous programming knowledge and experience.
Due to the current pandemic, the competition will be held online. Participants can apply as individuals or teams of three members, and they will be assisted by mentors.
“Competitors will have 10 hours to develop a prototype solution and will be able to use the Internet and programming language of their choice. The task of the competition will be known the day before, and after the hackathon all proposed solutions will remain the property of their creators,” explains Katarina Simic, participant in the first female hackathon, and now a software engineer at Namics.
According to her, it is important that the final solution be usable in a real environment, authentic in relation to existing ideas, and that it contain at least some part of the software code. As it is reminded, the research of the organization “Girl Scouts” shows that at the age of 17 there is no gender-based difference in interests and abilities, but that the perception changes later.
“Boys and girls are equally interested in technology, and girls are even more innovative than boys. However, the same research shows that boys are more confident, which is later reflected in the choice of occupation. We want to encourage as many women as possible to try programming,” says Katarina Simic.
According to the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, between 15 and 20 percent of women work in the Serbian IT industry. Simic notes that the situation is similar in the whole of Europe and large world companies, but that it is not a matter of statistics because, as she adds, it has been proven “that mixed teams have the color of communication and are more innovative”.
Applications run until midnight on December 6, and the form and other information about the hackathon are available via the following link, Nova Ekonomija reports.
