With a mere 16% of the tech workforce being female, the industry is not just on the brink of a troubling disparity—it has already arrived there. The current state of affairs poses a serious risk of perpetuating systemic discrimination, steering society onto a precarious path. In 2022, the number of Computer Science graduates who identified as female was 18%, but instead of increasing, it dropped to 16% in 2023. We have a problem, and we need to finally find a solution.
Free tuition, a peer-to-peer methodology, and a community-based schooling system run by 42 create a safe space for minorities who haven’t had a chance to interact with computers, either because of their family’s finances or due to a lack of encouragement from their community. It’s also a challenging program that attracts highly intelligent individuals who struggle in the ordinary educational system because the learning pace is too slow for them. By targeting these two groups, 42 addresses both inclusivity issues: (1) limited access to advanced tech education for females, children from poor families, and other minority groups, and (2) the “bro culture” within tech education systems that prevents these minority groups from thriving as coders once they get in.
42 makes inclusivity and community values a selection factor for becoming a student, which means the school actively discourages behaviors like “mansplaining” and “showing off.” This community aspect not only supports minority groups but also creates allies for inclusivity among its male students. The 42 school in Berlin opened in 2022, and in September 2023, it ran its first Piscine—a 30-day coding challenge that is part of the application process—with a 50/50 gender split. At the moment, 43% of 42 Berlin’s students are female, and the school is expected to reach full parity within the student body by the end of 2024.
The 42 curriculum is very challenging. Content-wise, it’s often more difficult than university-level Computer Science studies. It is also much more about application than theory and has a heavy focus on software engineering. If 50% of these students are female, it suggests that coding itself is not uninteresting to women. One conclusion here is that if this methodology works, we need to find a way to bring it to younger audiences to improve the intakes to higher education institutions as soon as possible.
How can we ensure inclusivity starts early?
Last month 42 Berlin hosted a Discovery Piscine program for high school students. Eighty participants aged 13-18 from two different schools in Berlin engaged in a program focused on collaboration with peers and finding answers independently rather than raising a hand and having someone else provide ready solutions. The program lasted four days for one school and two days for the other. For the first three hours, the 42 staff responsible for hosting high schoolers had the difficult task of redirecting impatient teenagers to those sitting next to them, encouraging them to use Google and ChatGPT to navigate problems before asking staff for answers. Teachers supervising the experience also needed to embrace this learning technique, but thanks to their openness, they immediately started encouraging their pupils to find their own answers—and they did.
Four hours into the experience, the hands dropped, and instead, pupils started to move, ask questions, and share ideas. Explaining their code to others helped them understand their work even better, and seeing a pupil who usually struggles with learning explain the basics of Python to their peers proved that patience, trust, and giving space to find their own answers works even with young adults.
While 42 might not be the answer to everything, we urgently need a solution for equity in tech, and the peer-to-peer methodology seems to bring us a step closer to finding it.
Would you like to study at 42? Apply here: www.42berlin.de
