Tech companies, are you ready to welcome the women of Generation Z? Because they’re definitely ready for you.
At the end of December 2019, HackerRank, a platform for programming training, published a very interesting report on women in technology from Generation Z (those born after 1997). A little-known (understood?) generation, Forbes is already saying that it will revolutionize the world of work. One thing’s for sure: this generation doesn’t compare to its predecessors. What worked with millennials, Generation X and baby boomers won’t work with Generation Z, since they’re the only generation born in the Web age. Here are two considerations to keep in mind in order to better understand women born after 1997.
1. Generation Z women learned to count and program at the same time
Nearly one in three Generation Z women learned to program before the age of 16, compared to 18% of women in previous generations. This is due to an increase in the number of schools teaching programming to our children at younger and younger ages. Given the growing need for computer engineers, schools have begun to offer programming as part of their curriculum, and the number of organizations dedicated to teaching children to code has also increased. Canada is following this trend. A report published in May 2019 by the Canada Research Chair in Information and Communication Technologies, lists 12 positive impacts linked to learning programming from kindergarten onwards, such as: greater academic motivation, better understanding of teamwork, problem-solving skills and increased resilience in the face of challenges.
2. Generation Z women know three programming languages sought by companies
As Generation Z women prepare to enter the job market, they already possess most of the technical skills sought by recruiting companies: JavaScript, Java and Python. There are slight differences between women and men of this generation: more women know Java (72%) than men (66%), and more men (63%) know Python than women (59%).
The programming languages most mastered by women and men are C and C++. This is probably due to the fact that these two languages continue to be among the most widely used in the industry according to GitHub’s 2019 report.
