Two talented students from International School Aberdeen (ISA) have won a national competition addressing gender imbalance in Scotland’s digital technologies sector.
Eloise Reid, 15, and Aliya Orujova, 16, have been awarded first place in the ADA Scotland Festival (ADA) with their video presentation on why women should be recognised as equal players in the computing science industry.
The ADA festival, named after the pioneering 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, aims to tackle the gender imbalance in computer science education in Scotland and is focused on creating female role models in the ‘tech’ industry.
The festival invited girls from schools and colleges across Scotland to enter the competition and announced the ISA students as the winners earlier this week to coincide with International Women’s Day.
The Grade 10 pair worked together remotely to create an entire storyboard, voiceover, slideshow animation and video compilation sharing their personal journey in the world of Computing Science.
ISA computer science teacher, Shashi Krishna, said: “The pandemic has presented us ways to convert challenges into opportunities through technology.
“It has been inspiring to see these two very talented girls take on this contest during virtual school and find a way to create a unique representation and identity at a national level.”
ISA head of school, Nicholas Little, said he was extremely proud of the girls’ resilience and courage to shine a light on gender bias.
Mr Little added: “I know I can speak for the entire ISA community when I say we are delighted for Eloise and Aliya and we are all so very proud of their hard work and achievement.”
A study of more than 1.4 million GitHub users showed that 71% of women’s suggestions were accepted when their gender wasn’t known, compared to 62.5% when it was. Women only make up 20% of the technology sector in Scotland.
Eloise believes more women should join the computer science sector to disprove the idea that only men can code well.
She said: “We made this video to show that computer science is for anyone, regardless of their gender.
“Most science and technology teachers are male, so I thought that computing was just for boys, not for people like me.
“But Aliya and I signed up for a computer science course together and, at first, we didn’t feel like we should be there with the rest of the boys. But we were both passionate about learning more and pushed ourselves to improve.”
Aliya added: “Computer science has taught me how to break down problems into smaller pieces which has helped me in other subjects such as maths and physics.
“More girls should definitely learn coding. Computer science is for anyone who wants to add a different perspective in computing and create code to help other people.”