Contributed by: Saniya Doshi Grace, Hacks Executive Lead

It’s no secret that women and non-binary folks are severely under represented within the tech community. In fact, women make up only about 20% of programmers and software developers, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This situation is not any better at UC Santa Cruz, where the Computer Engineering and Computer Science departments are only about 16% and 20% women, respectively. While part of the problem lies within biased hiring processes, a partial solution can be found by fostering innovation among these minority groups.

To this effort, a group of ten undergraduate students from UC Santa Cruz are organizing GraceHacks​—​a 12-hour all-female and non-binary hackathon. ​“From a personal experience, many of my female and non-binary friends, even though good at coding, are hesitant to attend regular hackathons as they fear their skills will be judged due to the prevalent stereotype of women not being smart enough for tech,” says Shivika Sivakumar, Technology Lead for the GraceHacks team. ​Inspired by this sentiment, the goal of GraceHacks is to foster a welcoming, supportive hackathon environment for women and non-binary students. The GraceHacks team strives to empower underrepresented groups with this event, and ensure that they have the confidence to create without the inherent bias or sexism that may be present in more traditional hackathon spaces.

The GraceHacks team is dedicated to encouraging attendees to close the gender gap, explore technology, and create new ideas. Participants will get twelve hours to make something from the ground up and present it to judges. The hackathon will also include sponsors, coordinators, speakers, snacks, food, prizes, and a lot of swag items. The event will be a great place for attendees to network, build experience, and learn new skills.

As part of the efforts to host a wonderful event for GraceHacks attendees, the team is currently working hard to reach out to corporations and campus organizations for funding. The students wish to reach out to as many female/non binary folks at UCSC and other universities through social media, for which they are currently developing promotional flyers and designs.

The team is committed to having this event occur annually. Since resources and spaces for women and non-binary folks in tech are limited, the students want to provide a safe space for these underrepresented communities every year. Because the event is currently unique to the

UCSC campus, the team plans to expand to other UC campuses in the upcoming years. ​The team also hopes that the attendees from GraceHacks go on to attend various different hackathons, and finally shatter the glass ceiling of hackathons having primarily male attendees.

The students are currently in search of corporate and organization ​sponsors​ to fund the event and help create an environment that will empower women and non-binary students in STEM. All sponsor logos will be on T-shirts, and the organization’s website and social media. The team is also in search of ​mentors​ ​and judges​ who will be able to help students and create a learning environment.

If you are interested in being a sponsor, mentor or judge for GraceHacks, please email info@grace-hacks.com.

Event will be April 11, 2020.