Women in Tech Scholarship Program

At Inventive, we believe in doing our part to help level the playing in tech for women by offering our education capabilities at a reduced cost, or even better for free. It is our goal to grow this program and find ways to promote more equal representation for women in the engineering fields.

As part of our commitment to women, 25% of our scholarship fund is available for educating and placing women into the software engineering field. For every 10th student enrolled in a class we set aside a scholarship slot for a qualified applicant. These available scholarships provide 100% tuition coverage and job placement assistance post-graduation.

What happened to women in tech?

Prior to the prevalence of personal computers in the home in the 1980s, there were a great deal more women working with computers and in computer science programs. As soon as the personal computer came out in its most basic form, marketing companies published campaigns that targeted mostly boys and men to use these PC’s as “toys” to play video games and tinker with. Due to this early exposure, boys had a better understanding of how computers worked and that expectation of knowledge became the norm for most entry level college programs. By not having the same level of exposure to computers early on, girls would enter into college programs already behind. This contributed to much of the decline in the representation of women graduating with degrees in engineering and is only now starting to see that trend change.

With the representation skewed in the education system it’s not surprising that the engineering workplace has shown a similar disparity between male and women representation. Couple that with the perception that the software engineering field is largely a “boys club” – where women aren’t treated as equals, companies are increasingly seeking to level the playing field by promoting a more diverse and equal representation in their workforce. In some environments, women may be faced with some “locker room talk” amongst their male counterparts but by and large most companies are sensitive to this and doing whatever it takes to ensure women feel comfortable and empowered to make an impact in their roles. Companies know that a more diverse workplace yields better results for a diverse world.

Some key statistics:

• Women earn 60% of all bachelor degrees, 60% of all master’s degrees, 48% of all medical degrees, and 18% of all STEM degrees.
• Women represent 47% of the general workforce
• 59% of the college-educated, entry-level workforce are women.
• Only 24% of STEM positions are held by women.
• Only 9% women in STEM positions hold leadership positions.
• 25% of the computer science field are women.
• Only 12% of engineers are women.

Some great reads:

• NPR – When Women Stopped Coding: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
• Computer Science – Women in Computer Science: https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/

Selection Criteria