Little Miss Geek
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Little Miss Geek is the social arm of Lady Geek’s business. The aim is to do for the tech industry what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners; to realign attitudes from the ground up and bring about nationwide change. We want to inspire the next generation of young girls to become tech pioneers.
We will be celebrating the release of the book on Wednesday 3rd October at 7pm at the Apple Store in Regent Street. With a panel of special guests including Wired Online, Stylist and a group of girls aged 11-12 & 15-16 years old, we will be discussing ‘How to Inspire the next generation of young girls to become tech pioneers’.
For an invite please email lucie@ladygeek.com.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What the campaign entails:
To kick start the campaign, Belinda Parmar (Founder and CEO of Lady Geek) has written a book, also called Little Miss Geek, which outlines the problem and how we can solve the issue.
We are also planning to run ‘after-school coding clubs’ for girls, which aim to excite and educate young girls how to code.
We have already begun carrying out workshops in both primary and secondary schools, where we explore both girls and boys’ perceptions of the tech industry; their attitudes towards the I.C.T. curriculum and provide them with careers advice within the industry.
In addition, we are hosting Twitter Parties to raise awareness of the issue (#LittleMissGeek). Our first Twitter Party trended Top 3 in the UK:
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Why we are running the campaign:
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Women only make up 17% of the UK’s tech workforce and this has been falling by 0.5% each year = we need to encourage more women to want to work in the tech industry.
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There was only 1 girl for every 11 boys in the average UK A-Level computing class in 2011. Girls account for 56% of high education applicants but only make up 14% of Computer Science and I.T. subjects = we need to excite girls to want to study computing, so they are more knowledgeable about tech.
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80% of women want creative independent job roles. Only 30% of women believe that tech jobs can provide such an opportunity = we need to change the negative perception women have about the tech industry.
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4 out of 10 gadgets are now bought by women but only 3% of women are creative directors in this industry = we need women to become creators of tech and not just consumers.
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What we aim to achieve:
We hope to gain national Government awareness and backing, so the issue is taken seriously and initiatives are put into place to help get more females into the industry.
We won’t rest until women make up 50% of the UK’s tech workforce.
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@LadyGeekTV #LittleMissGeekBook
