On Sunday, March 25, the Women in Technology Society (WiTS) at Western University is hosting the annual SheHacks conference for the second year.
Launched in 2014, WiTS aims to create a supportive community for female students at Western who are studying or interested in Computer Science and Software Engineering. It is currently being managed by co-presidents Michelle Chen and Joy Ling.
“We are Western’s premier resource for Women in Technology and so anything they want to learn whether it is workshops, events, or community gatherings, we are the ones who supply the information to them,” said Ling.
Although Western is a non-target school for technological industries, there are many students that want to learn more about technology.
This begins with pre-registration where people can form a team. Afterward, there are five workshops planned for the attendees to pick up new skills to create projects such as websites, mobile applications or data analytics systems.
“Last year’s projects included an automated bartender robot, meme dictionary websites, a fitness mobile app, a video game in unity, and so much more,” said Ling.
According to Ling, last year’s conference had a lot of first-time hackers coming from a number of different disciplines. By the end of the six hours, tangible products that could be included on resumes and portfolios were created.
“We are expecting individuals who are very new to this, so to walk in with nothing and walk out with new skills is really inspiring,” stated Ling.
Additionally, major sponsors such as Scotiabank and Google will be present at the event.
The conference was sold out within three hours of its release and there are currently three hundred people on the waitlist.
A common concern WiTS have to face is the fact that this event is for women only.
According to Chen, they chose to focus on supporting women as they are an underrepresented group in the technological field. In their experience, Chen and Ling noticed two of the major issues: not many women apply to hackathons, and if they do, their experience is not on par with the other attendees.
“Having worked in the industry before, I really saw the disparity. I’ve been in boardrooms and I realize, I am the only female in this room. I work with development teams with fifty other males and only I was one of two females—and I was simply an intern. So, it is a real issue,” stated Chen.
They are not targeting women just to increase the number of women present; they are targeting the individuals who are interested but do not receive the same opportunities as men.
“It isn’t just about entering the industry, it is also about knowing about technology. Technology is intertwined with every aspect of our life, and if you imagine tech being designed by a majority of males—we are 50% of the population, we will have different use cases than males,” said Ling.
Many other hackathons have a very unbalanced ratio of males to females. Normally, males have previously formed teams with more experience than competing females.
“The couple girls present will not be welcomed as much, resulting in less prizes and opportunities going towards the female crowd. So we made this event thinking we needed to decrease the gap that exists, we do not want to put women higher than men, we merely want both groups on the same level,” explained Chen.
Ling recently attended a HeforShe panel which discussed the inclusion of more diverse teams.
“A lot of our future is shaped by futurists—people who try to envision what the future looks like—and so what I was trying to tell the panelists is that if the future is going to be shaped by a certain demographic of people, like white men, then what does that say for the rest of us? They aren’t going to be thinking about us in the way we would,” said Ling.
To learn more about their organization click here and to learn more about SheHacks II click here.
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