The Tech Gender Gap is Solvable

go and change their lives. In this episode, Jacob Weisberg is in conversation with technologist and activist maryam jam So, think of everything you've ever done on a computer, searching, sending, playing, paying, and think of the role computers play in medicine, in science, and transportation. None of this could happen without software, and software basically is code. Coder might be quiet, but they're powerful.

Now you probably know about the gender gaps in the field of health and education, and in economic and political opportunity, as well as security and just well being. You know about them because you personally experience those gaps, or maybe you're just one of the lucky ones who have heard about them well. The Rockefella Foundation has also gathered comprehensive data documenting a digital gender gap and estimated two hundred

million fewer women are online compared to men. In June twenty eighteen, GSMA, which reports on the mobile industry, published data on the gender inequality in mobile technology aka the way most of us around the world access the Internet. Women on average are twenty six percent less likely to use mobile internet than men, especially in low and middle income countries and who makes the Internet well here in

the US. In twenty sixteen, Google we found that black and Hispanic students were one point five and one point seven times more likely to have an interest in learning computer science, but they're the very ones who are less likely to have access to those resources. Two thirds of white students report using computers at home, whereas only half

of black and Hispanic students do so. If you're female, if you grew up disadvantaged, it's tough to maneuver yourself into the important and ever expanding world that is coding, that is basically making computers do what we want them to do. That is until maryam came along. Maryam Dam knows what it's like to go from being powerless to powerful.

Her life is pretty extraordinary. Today, she's a pioneer in system change and was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum for her work supporting women and girls, but all of that came after she was abandoned as a child in rural Senegal, before being raped at eleven years old and traffic to France, where the abuse continued. Mariam made her way to England and at sixteen years old, she used a local library to teach herself how to

read and write. She eventually became a technologist and quickly understood the power that that held. She sees her life now as a roadmap for other young girls. Jacob and Mariam get into that and it is so much more too. So enjoy this conversation and I'll see you on the other side. Mary. But obviously your effort to teach girls to code reflects your own experience. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about how you came to this idea. I am from Senegal, West Africa. That's

where I was born. When I was growing up, I didn't have any education, so I didn't go to school. I couldn't read and write until I was sixteen years old, and when I was eleven years old, I was abused by my colonic teaching. My country is a Muslim country, so when I was thirteen years old. I was trafficked from Senegal to France and I ended up in the UK. So I used to do cleaning jobs and working in bars and hotels. I see people in suit and things

like that, and I wanted to find a job. And I remember the you know, some of the ladies were telling me, you know, we can't find your job because you don't have any skills. We can't put you in banks, or we can't put you, you know, in supermarkets things like that, because you need to communicate. Also you need

to speak English. My English was very very broken. And then slowly, slowly I started going to local library, start learning how to read, and you know, being very disciplined and focused, and every day I'll spend two hours at the library. And then I started learning mats and how to imput data on Excel. I started to learn how to code. In that time, Google was born. On their platform, they had a blog. People can write and then the

blog will be converted. You know, you can write some texts and the text will be converted into into blog. And discover that. In that time, I had had so many anger in me and and sow many frustration. I was asking myself why I was in the UK, you know, why my mum abandoned us as children. So I had a lot of ications and then I was looking at BBC and TV and all these channels, and then I just saw Bob Geldof and Bono doing the doing the live aid things. That just really makes me very upset.

And I think that the way they came about was like, you know, okay, we are the saviors of Africa. We're going to save the whole world. You were upset because it was it seemed condescending. You. Yeah, it was really weird because I saw that, you know, like everybody was talking about poverty. And then I said, well, you know, actually I was this sort of I was the young women in Africa growing up and you didn't do anything about it, and you know, it wasn't their fault really,

but I think people could understand my frustration. And then I wrote a an open letter to Bono and Bob Geldof for the first time and asked them to back off from Africa. You wrote to them just to make this clear on the blog that you created after teaching yourself to read and write, teaching yourself to code, and building yourself at a public library. Yeah, my first open letter was to Bob Geldof and Bono. You were just asking them to back off from Africa. And then the

Guardian pick it up, show it to Bob Geldoff. He didn't like it. You know, Bono didn't like it either, and they thought that I was very ungrateful as an African. Anyway, that created a conversation and then you know, in the end they actually saw, you know my point, and that created a One International, which is now Bono's organization. I got called to come in and find a way to help them understand that the message they're trying to portray in Europe is to too different to what's happening on

the ground. It's such an amazing story that after suffering this abuse and neglect, lack of education sixteen, you taught yourself to do all of these things that people with tremendous opportunities in many cases haven't haven't learned to do, such as coding the way you have. I mean, it raises the question, marm, whether you're just an extraordinary person or whether you're a model that a lot of other poor people can follow. I get to ask that question.

I don't think I'm special, but I think that the trauma I've lived as a child, you know, we'll never go away, still is still on me. And I see that with young girls growing up in refuge comes. For example, when you've been through difficulty in life and you've been through trauma, you try to find a way to get by. And this is the mentality I have now, where I leave day by day. Every days it is another day, and I just think that, you know, I become very

tenacious in getting things done. Why the focus on coding as the skill that can provide this vehicle, particularly for girls, to get out of their terrible circumstances. I mean, presumably there are lots of skills you could learn as a young person that would help you out of poverty, help

give you access to power, to the wider world. It started when I started to learn match at the library and then starting reading dictionaries and understanding words, because bear in mind, when I came to the UK, I couldn't understand English, I couldn't decode the information, and so you could put words in front of me, I wouldn't really understand them. I used to pick up books with numbers and I start coding really using XHML was from the beginning because I could put some numbers and then it

will translate on a page. And then I think that what I'm trying to do now is trying to talk to girls about digital skills and many many of the applications we use around the world, for example, people don't know how it was made. And I've been always fascinated in how things are made and designed, and you know who is behind the things doing things. And I like to see things being translated in numbers, but also being

translated inwards. And I see this with refugees now in city, and refugees and people in Lebanon, for example, when you are poor or you've been traumatized you are, you consume information very very quickly. So I have a photographic memory where I don't forget things. Although that combination have helped me to learn how to code seven code in languages in two years. And then I had to go back to the agency to tell them, actually, now I'm a

couda and lady didn't understand what I was saying. So now I'm a couda and I build a website and I'm a full stack developer. I really like numbers in wards. Your organization has the very suggestive and interesting name I Am the Code, which I guess speaks to that pride in learning it. But also, you know, we use the expression cracking the code when you figure something out, and it's not just learning to program and write software, but figuring out this larger code of how the world works.

Am I reading too much into the name of your organization? No, No, you're absolutely right, But I think there was something else about it, because I think what happened is during the years, I was called to give, you know, a major speech at Davos, and I was very very nervous, and I didn't know what to do and what to say. I've never met those influential, powerful people before. And then I said to my son, you know, what do you think I should say? My son said, well, mommy, you are

the code. And what I translated from that conversation was, you know, I'm tenacious. I don't give up, you know, despite all the timultuous childhood I had, I don't give up. And then despite that, I'm helping all the young women to get confidence. And that then created a massive conversation at Davos because I was the first senegalist woman to teach white middle class women in Guildford where I leave how to code, and now we have many, many women coding there. But what I'm saying is that yes, you

are the code. You can learn how to code, but at the same time, you have the key to unlucky your life. You have the key to build your life. Despite you know all the challenges and all the difficulty, you can get this key and go in and open the doors for yourself and for other people. So I am the code is about coding at the same time, it's about giving women and girls power to go and

change their lives. Software has traditionally been dominated by men, and so many of the issues we're seeing now around harassment and abuse online around software encoding discrimination seems to reflect to some extent that it's men who've written most of it. Do you see that as part of the problem you're addressing by bringing women into coding and software design.

That's true, men men have done that, But I think also, you know, women used to crack the code, and they used to decode information, but it never had any visibility or any credit given to them. For many, many years, we had many women inventors who understood mathematics, centers, science, they understood so many you know, how the world was functioning. They actually, you know, if you just look at the

GPS was invented by by a woman. But I think sometimes we just forgot those stories and those inventors who have helped us become who we are today. You know, we're not giving confidence to young women to go for it, not just you know, because they can, but also women have more empathy, They have more compassion and kindness when they're designing solutions because they design solutions for their communities

and for you know, the real problems. Men they design things because they you know, it's kinde of like cool, and they can make money or they can just launch an ip O very quickly. But you know, women design things to you know, to help their communities and help their friends. That's what I saw my young women actually doing. And it's one thing to try to teach women to

code and Guildford. It's another thing to try to teach young women to code and sanegal example, there must be a lot of obstacles to trying to set up and communicate what we're trying to communicate in some of the places you're trying to do it, can you talk about some of those challenges. That's very true. We have a lot of challenges where the women we have in Guiltful are totally different through women we have in the refugee

campaign Kenya in Senegal. But I would have learned during the last three years is that it's not a location problem. Is actually the all smart young women who wants to learn a different skill. So we have changed the world coding to digital skills. For example, we are helping young women to become digitally intelligent. They know how Instagram was crazy, how Facebook was created, and we help them get into the information where they know how actually the solution we're created.

And I think that if we start giving young women and girls the power to understand, you know, how wire frames are made and how things are written the code behind is how to edit it and have to review the code and how to make it more empattiic for example, or how the AI, how the data was collected and who is involved. We're now in sixty four countries. I've seen so many young women and girls and it's really

not a location problem, but it's a systematic problem. And that's why go in and teaching young women goes mathematics and basic science and helping them understand the global issues like climate change, gender equality. You know, how do you read this inequality? And how do you get a bank account? Things like that helps a young woman to become very powerful because she knows she's participating. That's how she changed her community, changed her lives, and then there's less abuse

for example, and she's very very confident afterward. I think the training sessions you run are open to boys as well, although maybe they're more girls than boys. Is there a difference in trying to teach girls or teach boys to code? No, no, there's not a big difference. The reason why we want you to include some of the boys because we when we set up I AM the Code and the mission was to actually get one million women and girls coders. And we find out that when we're doing the clubs,

boys want to be part of it. And if you look into some Muslim countries like in Afghanistan, in Senegal, in Sudan for example, we need to get the boys involved. And in Mali in his chair because despite us going and teaching girls how to code, there are some social issues where the young woman is still, you know, look down to you know, the parents are not very confident

in letting them go. So we get the young boys, you know, who are almost like their brothers and their cousins to be part of the clubs and then support the young women to be part of it. In Senegal, we had to get some of the boys to come and support the young women. And we respect the culture of the countries, but it's very important with his young boys gender equality and how to be kind to young

women and girls, and then they usually work together. We just want to make sure that we create at a bit of balance but also help young boys to be part of that. I am the Coode movement because I believe that the only way we can achieve gender equality is by educating boys and men to understand women issues. Some of the people you've taught have already started to have meaningful success in their careers and some of them

are becoming entrepreneurs. Is that part of your mission? Are you helping to coach people to start their own businesses, to start their own organizations? Yeah? When we have women millionnaires in Senegal, so we have amazing young women who are now entrepreneurs. They're doing amazing. Well in their countries, they're building solutions, They're sitting government for example, they sit in telecom companies. You know, some of our young girls

are our mothers. The children are now coming back to the I Am the Code program that I Am the Code idea has been cooking for the last five years and beyond that. So all the young women have been mentoring for the last ten years have now become you know that I AM the Code ambassadors. They're taking I Am the Code their communities. He has almost become this family. Now people are paying back and giving back to the

community and they're now building their businesses. Who are really really important for the Africa tech ecosystem because in the past, we didn't think about women as agent of change or agent of economic development. But we fought many African women and young women were seen as object of development. You know, the NGOs just giving handout and helping them with agriculture programs things like that. But now the women actually designing

their own e commerce sides. They're designing their own solutions in Senegal, in Kenya, for example, their climate change activists, they're using technology to create campaigns. For example, one of our young women in Kenya has a lot of work on deforestation. So the idea really is to use technology as a way of empowering this young women and girls, but at the same time teaching them skills that will give them job, give them money, and ultimately, you know,

they become very proud of themselves. That's that's the goal of I Am the Coode. You talk about teaching a million girls to code by twenty thirty in just a decade. How are you doing on that goal and how realistic is that? Oh, it's very realistic. We've done so far. Fourteen thousand young women and girls are part of the I Am the Code program and we didn't have any peer,

any marketing in sixty four countries. It's really overwhelming to see how the program has reached so many many women, not just in Africa, but across the world in China and Japan. Is very large now and it's quite a humbling to see young women having their lives changed through I Am the Code. I didn't expect that. So fourteen thousand to a million, you have, by my calculation, nine hundred and eighty six thousand to go. How will you finance that? Who will help to support you? In that

incredibly ambitious goal. We will reach the goal because we have over twenty seven companies worldwide who have committed to the number of already and so we're working with corporates to get their staff members to become volunteers. We have women calling us they want to become champions, so they want to use their network to help spread the world. Like you know, your program is definitely going to help

us get more visibility out there. And we also have digital clubs, we have hackathons, we have you know, so many boot camps. People are just joining because they can see that it makes sense. So yeah, we have ambitions plans this year at the United Nations, but also next year. Twenty twenty is a big It's a big milestone for us because some of the girls are getting scholarships. Now we have young girls actually coming to work for I

AM the Code where am I No. Listeners are hearing you talk and asking what they can do to help support your efforts and the goal. Generally, what are some of the things that people listening might be able to do to advance the goal. They can definitely become mentors to the girls, They can become ambassadors of I AM the Code, they can run their own hackatons, they can provide space for us, they can be part of the you know, the movement to get young some of the

young girls coding. We have many corporate organizations, for example, who are giving us space. They're giving us some hours to volunteer for I Am the Code, and they're opening their offices to have digital club. And they're also traveling with us to meet the girls in a most difficult

places around the world. We are the first organization to go into refugee camp in Kenya where the two hundred thousand people live in the refugee camp, eighteen thousand of them are women and girls, and they are the first young women and girls in a refugi camp to learn how to code. And we in slams when five us in Brazil. We are in places where I grow up as a young girl. And the reason why I'm going back there is to tell the world that those people

they matter. By going back and giving holding those young girls and helping them to be confident and to also gain a skill, I believe that coding is the future. If they can decode information and build a website or build an app and get some skills to help them get money. They wouldn't be trafficked, they wouldn't be young prostitutes, they wouldn't be abused because they have to depend on

someone else. So I'm trying to change society problems at the same time giving young women skills so they don't end up like myself. And how about here in the United States, Mariam, is there a role for your organization to play here? Are you active here? We have some major banks who won't support I am the Code and hopefully we're going to go to deprived communities. Because our content is free. People can use them in prisons, they can use them in places. In the UK, we go

to prisons and places where we can rehabilitate people. So we're hoping that by the beginning of twenty twenty. I am in the United States. Um, it's such an audacious idea to say someone who's been a victim of trafficking should be writing software. Have you seen other women who followed the kind of path that you did and had

that extraordinary transformation? Yeah, I haven't seen it yet. I've seen many women who some women who've been trafficked and have difficulty in their life, but mainly they go into the activism the world and share their stories with other people around the world. But for me, that's not enough, and my pioneering system change. That's what I do. I

change systems in countries and in government. And I believe that the reason why I was trafficked from Senegal and the reason why my mother actually abandoned us as children, and you know, I was abused and rapped by my colonic teacher in my country in Senegal and ultimately traffic from Senegal is because the system of the country was broken. And so what I try to do, if I am the code at the same time, is how do you

fix systems in countries? How do you educate government and the private sector to understand that actually, you know, if you mess up one child's life, you know, just messing up her life, where you're messing up the entire community's life. For example, we don't have birth certificate. We totally are in conito in Senegal. And I see this today in the Refugi camp where you know, the worst is just watching things happening to two million, millions of women and

girls from Senegal to Nepal. So unless someone come up with something very ambitious and very ruthless like I am the code, nothing will happen, and I've seen change happening from Buendis Areas to Senegal just because I dare to be visible and I dare to tell the world. If you don't want to find out any more women being traffic and taken away, you have to change the system

in the country. You don't want to have any more immigrants in Europe or in the United States, change the system in their countries, give them the skills, and as soon as you do that, they wouldn't need to come here. That's why I want the young girls who have the skills in their countries and build the businesses in their countries, and if they want to travel, they can have they can travel in a very legal way without being insulted. I'm just trying to fix some of the problems the

world has failed to fix. Mary. I'm moved by your story and inspired by what you're trying to accomplish. Thanks for joining us Unsolvable. Thank you for having me. Wow. So an incredible personal journey Mariam has made. But to me, what is so thrilling to hear about is the scale of her ambition and also her belief that other women and some men can use tech skills to thrive and flourish the way she has. Mariam's a disruptor in the

best way possible. Okay, I've got to go and write a strongly worded blog post bono on Bob Geldoff now, and I'd advise you all to do the same or maybe more practically. Why don't you see how you can get involved in her mission at I Am Thecode dot org. Solvable is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation, with production by Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Engineering by Jason Gambrell and the fine folks

at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal Wise. Special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fain, Julia Barton, Carlie Migliori, Sheriff Vincent, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins, Now go solve it.