High schools and colleges are turning more towards mentorships in order to get more women to join the technology workforce after they graduate.
The efforts come as a recent study found that the number of computing jobs held by woman has declined from 35 percent in 1990 to 26 percent today, according to VentureBeat.
Graduation rates is also a big problem, with the rate of women graduating with a computer science degree declined from 14 percent in 2009 to 11 percent in 2010. Only one-third of declared engineered majors at Stanford and MIT in 2014 were women.
Schools like MIT, Stanford and USC are engaging in the mentorship practice with the national Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) programs, which allow high school girls to get involved in hands-on activities and labor tours, VentureBeat reported.
"Engineering boils down to problem solving, and good motivating problems can stimulate the engineer to come out in anyone who has tendencies," said Linda G. Griffith, professor in biological and mechanical engineering at MIT. "So I try to show (young girls) that engineering is a liberating, wonderful, career that gives you freedom to solve problems that drive you nuts when you see them in society."
Christy Armwake, an electrical engineering Ph.D student at Stanford, said the school started a recruitment program that gave local high school students mentors for engineering projects.
"When these students presented their work at our annual banquet, they all stated that they were interested in pursuing engineering majors and that this project helped them decide that," Armwake said.
One example of a woman succeeding in the tech industry is Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Sama Group, who seeks to push the significance of mentorships with Samasource, a non-profit organization that connects women with jobs in Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other tech giants, VentureBeat reported.
Janah said that despite the success that's taken place with women getting jobs in tech firms, more work needs to be done to make the male/woman ratio more equal in the industry.
"It's about placing big bets and heavy investment on our future," she said. "It's estimated that within the next 10 years, 75 percent of jobs will require tech skills, so it only makes sense that we connect women- those who have the greatest economic impact- to that opportunity."
