Like a fish in the water. Every summer, the 42 school welcomes several hundred curious people from the world of computers, who came to face the pool test. A regular event for the establishment founded by Xavier Niel, which takes place five times a year.
The candidates confront the complex that they exercise for a month, in a climate of mutual aid, but also of competition. The best thing at the end of this pool will integrate the very popular school courses of the 42nd school, of its next school year.
But in parallel with the traditional pool, there is the discovery of the pool. A week of learning strictly reserved for women who are tempted to discover it, for 5 days. Here, the pressure is not the same since the objective, in the long term, is not to integrate the school.
In the new facilities of school 42, a large open space is dedicated to this training. During this intense week, one hundred women, all ages and all overview, learn web programming. Shell, HTML or CSS, this dense experience is a first approach to the way Internet is configured.
An unknown immersion
Inesse, Asthma and Saïna, made the great immersion. However, these three students in their twenty years were not familiar with the digital sector. After a STMG BAC, they were oriented in communication or economy and management studies before the programming came to prick its curiosity.
What pushed them to embark on this initiation? It was through relatives or personal experiences that young women discovered it. “My brother was studying at AI,” said asthma, Tech & co, for example. Then he began taking lessons in OpenClassrooms, training in online programming.
Saïna has begun to be interested in the field after having scheduled her portfolio herself as part of her studies. The discovery pool is asthma, who suggested that he participate, which does not regret.
A little further in the room, Ivanne concentrates on its lines of code. The former teacher pushed the doors of school 42 with the desire to become a technical profession, claiming that in this branch, “remains the most affordable.” With this first approach, quarantine expects “winning technicalism.”
Programming training opens the opportunity to exercise “a much quieter and more” flexible “profession. She who wants to spend more time with her children, the profession of the school teacher became too long and” very exhausting nervously. “The investment completely in this new path, would like to” work on her account and create applications. “
A male environment
“I didn’t know in high school,” Asthma said talking about programming. This 5 -day experience completely changes the aspect that young women had in computer science.
“Midfare”, “not for women”, a priori are still numerous in a sector largely dominated by men. “Don’t go there, there are only children!” Inesse said that his secondary teachers discouraged him to go to Sti2D (technological sector where computer lessons are provided).
Being among women avoid sexist clichés and establishes a climate of trust. Like many volunteers who participated in this initiation, the three students “feared to submit to comments” of men who instinctively would feel more qualified in computer science.
Inesse even evokes “an impression of shame” when it is in the middle of a group of mostly men. The observation is shared by Ivanne: “She is afraid to enter an environment of men,” she says.
In the space of a few days, this training will have been enough to convince the three young women to continue digital. Two of them even plan “try the pool in September.” The objective will be to work in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence or become a developer.
“More female models”
Ivanne, on the other hand, intends to continue in the field and hopes, someday, to create your own web pages and applications. Remember the need to have women in the field, in particular to eliminate any bias in applications. “I saw, for example, an application to monitor menstruation, I am sure that he is not a man who has developed it,” said quarantine.
He also insists on the need to “have female models”, often invisible, in favor of his male, very publicized counterparts (and whose mask figure is obviously Elon Musk). “Women in technology are not noisy, but they are heads.”
Discorvery pools are free and organized during school holidays. The next ones will take place in the weeks of October 13 and 20, and will open in registration for those over 16 from the beginning of the school year in September, at the School 42 site.
Source: BFM TV
