Women, coding & the future of work.

Alice Clavel, our Lead Teacher in Berlin, talked about her coding journey to UN Women & Empower Women, explaining how it's helped her prepare to tackle potential problems arising from the digitalisation of the workplace.

During a live webinar with with UN Women & Empower Women, 14th Feb 2019, we considered the steps that women need to take in light of the changing world of work. We explored whether women can leverage unique opportunities to build and sustain their services and goods, especially when the market could suffer.

Here are some key takeaways:

Learning to code leads to financial independence. I think for a woman, it’s really important. As soon as you earn enough money to be totally independent, it impacts everything else.

Never stop learning: it’s easy to say, it’s harder to do. For a developer, if you stop learning, your value on the job market will be decreasing.

It’s important today to build yourself technical general knowledge: keep up with the innovation, the scientific discoveries, but also sourcing your ideas from different backgrounds, such as arts.

A lot of women are facing imposter syndrome issues. In web development, this can happen a lot as we don’t “look like” classic developers. We have to work on it. Having more diversity and women role models is something that really helps.

You can learn to code online, but it requires a lot of self-motivation. If you want to go further and opt for a fast-track solution to change career, you should look at coding bootcamps.

Watch the whole webinar here:

Alice was joined by:

Sarah Gammage, Director of Gender, Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods, The International Center for Research on Women.
Anna Fälth, Manager “WE EMPOWER through responsible business conduct in G7 countries” Programme, UN Women moderated.