All women who learn coding are heroes! At least they are to me. The tech industry is extremely skewed towards men. Women make up 57% of the US workforce, but are drastically underrepresented in Info Tech. Only 23% of the programmer workforce are women, and the numbers for women of color are even smaller (less than 10%).

There are many reasons it can be difficult for women to break into the world of coding. But there are some great ways to get started. That’s where we all come in! I want to help build a community of women who want to learn to code Apex and mentors who want to help them do it. I’m going to blog about my own experiences as we go along.  There are many great women-centered Salesforce communities (shout out to #GirlyGeeks and GirlForce!), but I want to built one specifically for the newbie Apex coder. I don’t plan on doing this alone, so if you have ideas, please comment!

The General Plan

I have a general plan that is shaping up, which includes:

• Many small groups (4-7) of women, once of  which would be an Apex mentor. All willing and able to commit roughly the same amount of time to learn Apex.
• There will be different pathways for groups who can commit different amounts of time. So that we can learn at our own pace.
• We’ll use one or more of the existing web-based resources (Salesforce Trailhead and/or sfdc99.com) along with some additional tailored exercises.
• We’ll have regular small group meetings to go over the exercises and discuss real world implications of what we’re learning.
• We’ll have a forum for discussion with the greater Women Code Hero community.

Are you interested in joining as either a learner or a mentor? Stay tuned for more details!

Sources:

Women and Technology: By the Numbers (National Center for Women in Technology)
http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/btn_02282014web.pdf 

Did you Know: Demographics on Technical Women (National Center for Women in Technology)
http://www.ncwit.org/blog/did-you-know-demographics-technical-women

Ety’s Trying to Fix Tech’s Women Problem. Why Aren’t You? By Ann Friedman (Medium.com)
https://medium.com/matter/this-is-the-last-thing-youll-ever-need-to-read-about-sexism-in-tech-56b9a3a77af0