Google is offering vouchers to any women and minorities interested in learning how to code,
CNET's Seth Rosenblatt reports. Google is paying for three free months for any women and
minorities interested in tech to expand their skills. The offer is part of Google’s $50 million
“Made With Code” initiative, which aims to help close the gender gap in tech.While Google
is also offering the same vouchers to the women in attendance at its annual I/O developers
conference, the search giant has released an online application that’s available to women
everywhere. Google says its available vouchers for women number in the “thousands.”
This new initiative comes just days after Google published a diversity report that revealed
only 30% of its employees are women, while African Americans and Hispanics only comprised
1 and 2% of Google’s tech employees, respectively. Google said the current state of its company
diversity is “miles from where we want to be.”
Google did say at its I/O keynote, however, that there were twice as many women in attendance
compared to last year. Beyond Google, the Labor Department says only 20% of software developers
in the U.S. are women, while only 12% of computer science degrees today go to women. Megan
Smith, vice president of Google’s X division, said the company’s initiative to encouraging women
in tech is all about “debugging inclusion.”
Source: Business Insider