Tech Companies Announce ‘Girls Who Code’ Initiative – NYTimes.com

From the rest of the article, it sounds like Twitter (at least — maybe the others, too?) are creating courses to help teach young women to become successful as programmers and engineers.  These are big name companies to get involved.  Interesting that, of these four companies, only Google is part of NCWIT.  Will have to watch this and see what the companies actually bring to the table.

On Tuesday, Twitter, General Electric, Google and eBay announced that they were joining an initiative called “Girls Who Code,” which they hope will increase the number of young women who become programmers and engineers. They want to create a mentoring and teaching program.

The Girls Who Code group was founded by Reshma Saujani, the former New York City deputy public advocate, who plans to begin the coding program in New York this summer. Ms. Saujani hopes to introduce the program to other cities in 2013.

In a press release, Ms. Saujani, a hedge fund lawyer who lost a Congressional primary race in 2010, said that although 57 percent of college graduates were women, only 14 percent of computer science and engineering degrees were awarded to women.

via Tech Companies Announce ‘Girls Who Code’ Initiative – NYTimes.com.